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Book 31 i_ 

Copyright N° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The 

New Agrarianism 

A Survey of the Prevalent Spirit of Social 
Unrest, and a Consideration of the Conse- 
quent Campaign for the Adjustment 
of Agriculture with Industry 
and Commerce 



By 

Charles W. Dahlinger 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

Gbe "Knickerbocker press 

1913 



HI i A- 11 
.13 



Copyright, 1913 

BY 

CHARLES W. DAHLINGER.' ■$ 



Ube Tftnfcfterbocfter fl>rese, IRew Uorfc 



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©CI.A357030 



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PREFACE 

WHEN a litigant takes an appeal to a 
higher court, he is required to have 
printed in a book the record of the suit in 
the lower court, for use at the argument in 
the appellate court. The first requisite of the 
book is that it contain a brief statement, 
couched in the most general terms, of the 
questions involved, which in some States must 
not exceed half a page, on pain of having the 
appeal quashed. 

The present book is also an appeal, and the 
preface is a statement of the questions 
involved, which, like the statement of the 
questions involved in the appeals prepared by 
the lawyers in the courts of justice, has been 
made both brief and general, in order that the 
argument of the book may be given consider- 
ation by those to whom the appeal is taken. 

The appeal is from the widely expressed 
verdict which confuses evils apparent in 
the conduct of political, economic, and 
sociological matters into fundamental errors 
in the structure of government and in the 
operation of those public and private institu- 



iv Preface 

tions which control the industry and commerce 
of the country. The argument is an elabora- 
tion of the contention that the complaints of 
public and private shortcomings, while at- 
tributable in part to many causes, are yet 
primarily the result of the unequal progress 
being made between agriculture, and industry 
and commerce, with a discussion of measures 
for bringing agriculture to a parity with them, 
and an account of what has been accomplished 
in this direction in other countries. 

The appeal is taken to that class of thinkers 
who comprise the supreme tribunal of the 
people, which has the final decision of every 
great question which agitates the public mind, 
and which, uninfluenced by stress and storm, 
has the wisdom to distinguish the gold from 
the dross, with a true desire for the correction 
of existing evils, and the ability and deter- 
mination to devise means for meeting the 
exigencies of modern life as they arise, with- 
out that impetuosity which attempts to cut 
loose from all traditions, and to supersede 
existing systems by plunging the country into 
a sea of doubtful experiment. 

C. W. D. 

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 
May, 1 913. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — A Time of Idealism . . i 

II. — The Evolution of Business . 25 

III. — Culmination of the Dissatis- 
faction .... 59 

IV. — Large and Small Corporations 75 

V. — Fundamental Cause of the Com- 
plaints against Corporate 
Wealth .... 96 

VI. — The Relative Progress of Agri- 
culture in the United States hi 

VII. — Modern Agriculture in England, 

Germany, and Denmark . 137 

VIII. — Suggestions for the Improve- 
ment of American Agricul- 
ture 155 

IX. — Rural Financing . . .173 

X. — Irish Land Reforms . .192 

XI. — The Agrarians of Germany . 208 



The New Agrarianism 



CHAPTER I 
A TIME OF IDEALISM 

MANY books, and innumerable maga- 
zine and newspaper articles, have been 
written about the movement toward an ideal- 
istic goal which has been going on among 
the peoples of the earth during the last fif- 
teen years. No nation, no country, has been 
left untouched. A large section of the public 
press pronounces it the "Great Unrest." It 
has been largely an altruistic movement ; and 
to such persons as are more philosophic 
than the writers who are responsible for the 
effusions appearing in the radical press, it is 
nothing more than the idealism which ac- 
companies the transition that is always taking 
place in national life. Pronounced as it is, 



2 The New Agrarianism 

it is yet barely keeping pace with the tre- 
mendous progress being made in government, 
in industry, and in commerce, the abuses 
in which have stimulated its growth. D. 
H. Macgregor, the English economist, strikes 
the keynote of the movement when he de- 
clares that "many changes now go by the 
name of social reform which are little more 
than the removal of the most obvious 
abuses" 1 that surround society. 

In world politics, altruism has been a resist- 
less force. In the distant Transvaal the 
heroic Boer farmers, overwhelmed by num- 
bers, went down in defeat, but from the 
ruins of a sluggish civilization there has 
arisen, under English dominance, a new 
nation, comprising the four Boer countries 
of South Africa, under the premiership of a 
hero of the Transvaal disaster. By a master- 
stroke of statesmanship, the United States 
acquired on the Isthmus of Panama the 
only territory practicable for a canal to 
connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific 
Ocean, and the canal is now nearing comple- 
tion. In many far countries democracy 

1 The Evolution of Industry, D. H. Macgregor, New 
York, pp. 74-75. 



A Time of Idealism 3 

broke the leash which bound her to some 
throne. In Turkey the "Young Turks" 
forced the abdication of the Sultan, and, with 
a new sultan on the throne, they obtained a 
parliamentary government. Russia bowed 
to the spirit of the age, and granted its sub- 
jects the right to assemble in parliament. A 
new light dawned on Portugal, and it became 
a republic, as did also the long benighted 
Chinese Empire. Persia received a parlia- 
mentary government. The enfranchisement 
of women has made rapid progress, and the 
women have received a more or less equal 
suffrage with the men in nine of the States 
of the United States and in the English col- 
ony of New Zealand, in the six Australian 
states, and in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, 
Finland, and in the new republic of 
Portugal. z 

Religion and medicine were affected no 
less than politics. France disestablished her 

1 "The World Movement for Woman Suffrage," Ida 
Husted Harper, The American Review of Reviews, New 
York, December, 1911, pp. 725-729; "Woman Suffrage," 
Gwendolen Overton, The North American Review, New 
York, August, 191 1, pp. 271-281; "The Expansion of 
Equality," The Independent, New York, November 14, 
1912, pp. 1143-1145. 



4 The New Agrarianism 

Church. Spain, ever the most intolerant 
nation in Europe, conceded freedom of public 
worship. In the United States a movement 
for the union of all Christian religions was 
inaugurated by the last General Convention 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Medi- 
cine has greatly reduced the death rate. 
Infectious diseases were brought under mag- 
nificent control. Tuberculosis and typhoid 
fever were rendered harmless by being pre- 
vented, and yellow fever was practically 
exterminated. 

Inventions that benefit mankind received 
a renewed impetus. The air was all but 
conquered; the law of gravitation was set 
at naught. " Darius Green and his flying 
machine" of our childhood days has ceased 
to be a poetic fiction. The perfection of 
gasoline engines has enabled men to go 
sailing through the air in aeroplanes. In 
dirigible balloons, experts have made voy- 
ages covering over a thousand miles of dis- 
tance. Sending telegraphic messages through 
the air without the aid of wires has become 
a commercial success. The horseless car- 
riage was perfected, and the building of 
automobiles became an industry of such 



A Time of Idealism 5 

magnitude that in the United States alone, 
in 1912, three hundred and seventy-five 
thousand machines were built for pleasure 
and commercial use. 1 

It has been a period of great ethical 
development, and the world-wide forward 
movement has had a more far-reaching 
effect in the United States than in any other 
country. While the nation was young, while 
the soil was of virgin richness, while land was 
to be had in the West for the taking, every 
public or private act, unless flagrantly bad, 
went without criticism. Now that a string 
of cities extends from the Atlantic Ocean to 
the Pacific Ocean, that the cattle ranches 
have been cut up into farms, that colleges 
and schools dot every hill and valley, that 
public libraries exist in every city and town 
and almost in every village, men take a 
hypercritical view of moral conditions. Pass- 
able roads reach every farmstead, the Rural 
Free Delivery Post brings the mail to every 
farmhouse, newspapers reach every home, 
and satisfactory worldly circumstances allow 
men leisure to appreciate the higher aims in 

1 Automobile Trade Journal, Philadelphia, December, 
1912, pp. 71, 96. 



6 The New Agrarianism 

life. A spirit of chivalry has taken posses- 
sion of them, and they are waging a war the 
object of which is the elimination of all 
public and private abuses. 

The high moral altitude which these men 
have attained is not, however, solely the 
result of work done in recent years. It is 
the fruit of a process of evolution, inaugu- 
rated by master-minds, which has been going 
on for more than half a century. It was the 
idealists of the Civil War time who com- 
menced the present campaign against civic 
wrongs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, William 
Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, John 
Greenleaf Whittier, and Gerrit Smith, in 
striving for the overthrow of human slavery, 
began the movement in the United States 
for righteousness in public and private affairs. 

When the Civil War closed, the political 
party in power, with the glamour of a success- 
ful war as its inheritance, appeared immacu- 
late in the eyes of the country. The party's 
leaders were honest and patriotic, but they 
were partisans first. To them party triumph 
meant all. It meant the preservation of the 
Union, the prosperity of the country, the 
welfare of the people. Therefore the party 



A Time of Idealism 7 

must be perpetuated. With the wise and 
conciliatory Lincoln in his grave, the party- 
enacted extremely harsh laws for the recon- 
struction of the governments of the States 
lately in revolt. The consequence was that 
the men who had just emerged from slavery, 
led by unprincipled adventurers from the 
North, gained the political ascendancy. 
Soon corruption ran riot in half a dozen 
States, continuing until the men lately in 
rebellion against the national government, 
aided to some extent by the changing opinion 
in the North, again wrested the political con- 
trol from the negroes. But the political 
corruption which had almost pauperized the 
South, and perhaps as a direct consequence 
of the influences by which it had been 
brought into life there, under the spur of 
party loyalty, also gained more than a foot- 
hold in the North. As the politicians real- 
ized that they could not hope to retain their 
grip on the Southern States, they turned 
their attention to strengthening their politi- 
cal organizations in their own States. Men 
were selected for office solely because of the 
votes they could command; honesty or effi- 
ciency was not a necessary prerequisite for 



8 The New Agrarianism 

election or appointment to office. Favors at 
the expense of the government were granted 
freely if the recipients were in a position to 
render assistance to the party in power. 
Offices were multiplied needlessly; extrava- 
gance in the management of public affairs 
became an evil of great magnitude. Scandals 
in politics were a stench in the nostrils of 
every self-respecting citizen. A number of 
Congressmen and a Vice-President were 
openly charged with accepting stock in the 
Credit Mobilier, a corporation organized to 
finance the Central Pacific Railroad and 
the Union Pacific Railroad, both then in 
course of construction, the stock being given 
for the purpose of influencing the official 
acts of the accused men. A combination of 
distillers and Federal officials was discovered 
to have defrauded the national government 
out of large sums due for internal revenue 
taxes. A Secretary of War was accused of 
having accepted bribes in dispensing the 
patronage of his department. Laws were 
enacted for a price paid. Men high in 
official place were charged with awarding 
public contracts to concerns in which they 
were financially interested. Congressmen 



A Time of Idealism 9 

were said to be profiting by selling informa- 
tion obtained by them in the course of their 
public duties. It was common to see Sena- 
tors and Representatives accept retainers for 
appearing in the interest of private clients, 
both before the bodies of which they were 
members and before the executive depart- 
ments of the government, although, since 
1864, this had been a criminal offense, pun- 
ishable with fine and imprisonment. This 
deplorable condition extended into State, 
county, and municipal governments. Here, 
too, the officers were changed with every 
incoming administration; here, too, the only 
requisite for obtaining office was the power 
to influence voters. 

While this history was being made in the 
political world of America, a new class of 
thinkers had come upon the stage. Men 
of courage were everywhere arising and pro- 
testing against the evils that were besetting 
the national government. A vigorous mi- 
nority was opposed to continuing forever 
indifferent to governmental abuses. They 
realized that the first step in the direction of 
purifying politics would be to secure a 
better class of men for the public positions, 



io The New Agrarianism 

and that to do this it would be necessary to 
enact laws which would guarantee to the 
government employees a permanent tenure 
of office, contingent on efficiency and good 
behavior. Their efforts bore fruit as early 
as 1869, during General Grant's first term as 
President, when a law was enacted authoriz- 
ing the President to prescribe such rules for 
the admission of persons into the civil ser- 
vice as would promote its efficiency, and 
giving him authority to employ suitable 
persons to institute an investigation of the 
subject. The law failed of producing the re- 
sults anticipated by its originators, for the 
reason that President Grant, and the poli- 
ticians surrounding him, had not yet been 
converted to the new doctrine of efficiency 
in public life. But the reformers continued 
their efforts; they were not to be terrified 
by the cries of ''undemocratic" and "un- 
American" uttered by the opponents of a 
more permanent tenure of office, who were 
interested in obtaining office, and whose 
only qualification was the desire for place. 

In 1877, the efforts of these high-minded 
men began to bear fruit. In that year Carl 
Schurz, who was among the earliest of the 



A Time of Idealism n 

idealists in American politics, became Secre- 
tary of the Interior in President Hayes's 
Cabinet ; and he declined to permit removals 
in his department except for cause. To Mr. 
Schurz belongs the credit also of inducing 
President Hayes to forbid the officers of the 
government from taking part in the manage- 
ment of political organizations, caucuses, 
conventions, and election campaigns, their 
activity in which had done much to debase 
the public service. Mr. Schurz was like- 
wise responsible for the order prohibiting 
assessments for political purposes on officers 
and subordinates, and for the introduction of 
competitive examinations for appointment 
to office in the New York Custom House 
and the New York Post Office. 

A strong sentiment was growing up in favor 
of civil service reform, and when Chester A. 
Arthur was President, on January 6, 1883, a 
comprehensive civil service law was enacted 
which provided for a board of three com- 
missioners to aid the President in preparing 
rules for the government of the civil service. 
The law was laughed into statute books. 
Delegate Flannagan of Texas, in the Repub- 
lican National Convention of 1880, which 



12 The New Agrarianism 

nominated James A. Garfield for President 
and Mr. Arthur for Vice-President, in oppos- 
ing the resolution adopted by the conven- 
tion, advocating civil service reform, had 
blurted out: "What are we here for, if not 
to get the offices ?" The remark became 
the shibboleth of the civil service reformers 
in the election campaign of 1882, and the 
ridicule which it occasioned was largely in- 
strumental in changing the Republican ma- 
jority in the House of Representatives into 
a Democratic majority in the next Congress. 
It was after this that the Republican Con- 
gress, then still in power, reluctantly carried 
out the platform of its party, and enacted 
the civil service law. From that time for- 
ward the civil service has continually im- 
proved. Where there had been doubt as to 
the merits of the system, confidence in its 
value soon appeared. The classes of offices 
to which the civil service rules applied were 
constantly extended, and with the thirty- 
six thousand fourth-class post offices added, 
on October 15, 1912, by President Taft, 
the rules now apply to more than half the 
Federal offices, for the salaries of which there 
is paid out considerably over two thirds of 



A Time of Idealism 13 

the entire amount disbursed annually by the 
United States Government for salaries. A 
better class of men fill the governmental 
positions, the permanency of their tenure 
having increased their efficiency and enabled 
them to do their work better and more expe- 
ditiously. This statement is amply proven 
by the reports of the Civil Service Commis- 
sion. In their annual report for 191 1 the 
Commissioners say: 

"One striking effect of the merit system 
has been an increase in the amount of work 
performed with a relatively smaller number 
of employees. Thus while there has been a 
growth in public business and in its complex- 
ity during the year, there has been a decrease 
in the number of appointments." 1 

The civil service reform movement also 
served to direct public attention to another 
abuse in the government service. For many 
years it had been a common occurrence for 
government employees to farm out the duties 
of the office to which they had been ap- 
pointed, paying the substitute a meager 
compensation for the work done, the differ- 

1 Twenty-eighth Annual Report of the United States Civil 
Service Commission, Washington, 1912, p. 19. 



14 The New Agrarianism 

ence between the sum so paid and the 
salary constituting the profit of the holder 
of the office. The higher officials knew of 
and connived at the custom. It seems to 
have flourished for a longer period among 
the employees of Congress than among the 
employees of the other departments of the 
government. In 1895, however, Congress 
enacted a law forbidding the practice among 
the employees of the House and Senate, and 
it was discontinued. 

The national government has moved to a 
higher plane in other respects. The iniqui- 
ties wrought by the Louisiana Lottery, the 
Havana Lottery, and the hundred other 
lesser lottery schemes for gaining the money 
of the credulous, are not yet forgotten. The 
degrading traffic in lottery tickets, whereby 
the poor lost hundreds of thousands of 
dollars annually, has been stopped, by ex- 
cluding from the mails all matter connected 
with lotteries. Prosecutions were instituted 
against faithless Senators and Representa- 
tives in Congress who had besmirched their 
high offices by accepting bribes, or by advo- 
cating, for pay, claims against the govern- 
ment, before its departments. In 1903, 



A Time of Idealism 15 

Edward H. Driggs, a Representative in Con- 
gress from New York, was charged with 
accepting remuneration for having aided 
in procuring a government contract, but 
escaped punishment on a technicality. x The 
next year Senator Dietrich of Kansas was 
indicted for accepting a bribe for procuring 
for one of his constituents the office of 
postmaster, but failed of conviction on the 
ground that he had not yet assumed office. 2 
Later in the year, however, two Senators 
were tried and convicted, both for accepting 
fees for advocating private claims before 
departments of the government, Senator 
Joseph R. Burton of Kansas for appearing 
before the Post Office Department, and 
Senator John H. Mitchell of Oregon before 
the Commissioner of the Land Office. Sena- 
tor Burton, after vainly appealing his case 
twice to the Supreme Court of the United 
States, paid the penalty of his crime by 
serving nine months in a Missouri jail and 
paying a fine of twenty-five hundred dollars. 3 

1 United States vs. Driggs, 125 Federal Reporter, 520. 

2 United States vs. Dietrich, 126 Federal Reporter, 676. 

3 United States vs. Burton, 131 Federal Reporter, 552. 
This case rose on the defendant's demurrer to the indict- 



1 6 The New Agrarianism 

Senator Mitchell was sentenced to six months 
imprisonment and to pay a fine of one 
thousand dollars, but took an appeal to the 
United States Supreme Court, and died 
before the appeal was decided. 

Reform in municipal affairs has also been 
of overshadowing interest in recent years. 
The proportion of the population in the 
cities of over 25,000 inhabitants, as com- 
pared with the population in the country, 
has been constantly rising. In 1880 it was 
17.2 per cent.; in 1890, 22.2 per cent.; in 
1900, 26 per cent., and in 1910, 31. 1 per 
cent., or almost one third of the entire popu- 
lation. The increase has been so rapid, and 
is composed of such diverse elements, that 
it has remained largely an undigested mass, 
causing a condition to arise much like that 
prevailing in the South immediately after 
the Civil War, when the negroes were given 
the franchise, and bands of unscrupulous 
politicians, bent on their own aggrandize- 
ment, the demurrer being overruled. The decision was, 
however, reversed by the Supreme Court in United 
States vs. Burton, 196 U. S., 310. The conviction after- 
ward obtained was sustained in United States vs. Burton, 
202 U. S., 344. 



A Time of Idealism 17 

ment, assumed leadership over the forces of 
ignorance and indifference. The banner of 
revolt has been raised against this leader- 
ship in municipal affairs, and there is a 
large and growing class all over the United 
States believing in, and bent on having, 
municipal governments administered at least 
as well as is the average successful business. 
Wastefulness and inefficiency are not, how- 
ever, the greatest evils against which this 
new revolution is being directed. For years 
these revolutionists have been working for 
an ideal. Their entrance into the fight for 
improved municipal government has been 
usually brought about by some condition 
which had become intolerable. A common 
cause of corruption in the smaller cities was 
where the executive, or some official under 
him, for a consideration, permitted gambling, 
prostitution, and illegal liquor-selling. This 
particular form of corruption was not, how- 
ever, confined to the small cities, some of the 
very largest being also honeycombed with 
the atrocious vice. The most recent example 
occurred in the city of New York, where 
certain of the police officials were said to 
have been collecting from this source an- 



1 8 The New Agrarianism 

nually the enormous sum of two million 
four hundred thousand dollars, and where a 
gambler who, because he had turned informer 
was brutally murdered, the murder, it was 
alleged, being instigated by no less a person 
than a police lieutenant in active service. 
The most deplorable feature of the entire 
shameless business is the fact that the accusa- 
tion was true. The police lieutenant was 
tried for the murder, found guilty, and 
sentenced to death, the four men whom he 
was charged with employing to commit the 
crime being later also tried, and found 
guilty and sentenced to death. 

In most cities, however, the depravity 
was generally the result of two causes: 
first, the corrupt manner in which the 
public contracts were awarded; and second, 
the actions of the men who controlled 
the granting of public franchises and privi- 
leges, in demanding that they be paid for 
granting that, which if right and proper, 
should be given gratuitously, and by the 
only too willing agreement of certain wealthy 
men to pay the price demanded of them. 
The rapacious rule of William M. Tweed 
in New York, from 1865 to 1871, whereby 



A Time of Idealism 19 

the city was robbed of millions of dollars, 
was the most notorious example of the first 
cause of debauched municipal government; 
of the other, there are the more recent 
instances of bribery in St. Louis, in San 
Francisco, in Pittsburgh, in Detroit. 

The men in control of the municipal 
governments realized that fortunes might 
be made by controlling the public utilities 
within their respective municipalities. In 
the early days they secured for themselves 
franchises for horse-car lines, for water and 
gas companies, for railroad and telegraph 
lines. When electricity as a motive power, 
and for light, became a commercial suc- 
cess, they procured the enactment of laws for 
the incorporation of companies to transact 
the business of supplying this new force; 
and the laws, in some cases at least, were so 
drawn that no previous notice of any in- 
tended application for incorporation was 
necessary. Immediately upon the laws be- 
coming effective, incorporation papers were 
presented to the proper authorities, who, 
being friendly, at once approved them. 
Later application for municipal consent was 
made, and, proper methods for insuring 



20 The New Agrarianism 

success being employed, the franchises were 
granted without question, the only interests 
to be safeguarded being those of the incor- 
porators. The political speculators then pro- 
ceeded to build operating plants if they were 
financially able, or they sold their franchises 
at handsome profits. They also procured 
the grant of franchises for the benefit of 
whoever employed them for the purpose. 

Efficiency in the conduct of municipal 
affairs was not sought after. Although ordi- 
nary mechanics were required to serve an 
apprenticeship of from two to five years, 
before being allowed to exercise their trade, 
for the more complex employments under a 
city government, no previous preparation 
whatever was required. The administration 
of cities was, in consequence, particularly 
inefficient; there was a complete lack of 
organization and discipline in the police and 
fire departments; petty robberies were nu- 
merous, fires were unnecessarily disastrous. 
The methods of keeping the accounts were 
entirely devoid of system; even in some 
of the larger cities, neither the treasurer who 
received the tax duplicates, nor the authority 
who delivered them to him, could ascertain 



A Time of Idealism 21 

from the duplicates the total amount of the 
taxes to be collected. Almost every munici- 
pal function was performed without regard 
to the well-being of the community. A low 
standard of public morals prevailed. 

A great improvement has taken place in 
the conduct of municipal governments, not- 
withstanding the scandals which yet affect 
them. The troubles arising from human 
depravity still remain, but in a lessened 
degree, and a decidedly more efficient ad- 
ministration has taken place. The civil 
service reformers did not stop at reforming 
the departments of the national government 
but gradually extended their efforts to mu- 
nicipal affairs, and now in over a hundred 
cities more or less stringent civil service 
laws are in force, which, while often evaded 
by unscrupulous executives, or other officers 
charged with their execution, provide a 
decidedly improved method for the appoint- 
ment and retention of officials. r 

During the last twelve years, reform in 
municipal affairs has also taken a wider 
scope than the mere improvement of the 

1 Twenty-sixth Annual Report of the United States Civil 
Service Commission, Washington, 19 10, pp. 30-31. 



22 The New Agrarianism 

civil service. Entirely new systems for gov- 
erning municipalities have been devised. The 
one most commonly advocated is a non- 
partisan and commission form of govern- 
ment. The doctrine of non-partisanship in 
municipal affairs has been in effect in a 
few municipalities for more than a quarter of 
a century, but government by commission 
has been in operation only for something 
over eleven years. It originated with the 
Southwestern city of Galveston, after the 
great inundation caused by the high-tide of 
September 8, 1900, when the place was 
almost entirely destroyed. The city was 
rebuilt by a commission, and has been 
governed by one ever since. Since its in- 
troduction in Galveston, the plan of com- 
mission government has been many times 
improved, that in operation since June 20, 
1907, in the city of Des Moines, Iowa, 
being the one most generally commended. 
The municipal elections in Des Moines are 
non-partisan in character. The city council 
consists of a single body elected at large, 
composed of the mayor and four councilmen, 
in whom is vested all the executive, legisla- 
tive, and judicial functions, the duties of the 



> 



A Time of Idealism 23 

councilmen being practically coordinate with 
those of the mayor. 

The connection of the executive, legisla- 
tive, and judicial powers marks the begin- 
ning of a new era in government in America. 
Heretofore it was considered treason to ad- 
vocate any other doctrine than that of a 
separation of the powers. The doctrine of a 
separation of the powers had been incor- 
porated in the national, and in many of the 
State constitutions shortly after the time 
when the country tore itself loose from mon- 
archical England, when the fear existed that 
a unity of the powers would lead away from 
liberty and toward a new despotism greater 
than the one which the country had just 
thrown off. The convention which framed 
the United States Constitution did not have 
the previous experience of any other country 
to guide it in respect to a division of the 
powers. It adopted the theory of Baron 
Montesquieu, as elaborated in his brilliant 
Spirit of the Laws, which historians now 
agree was not a true exposition of the fact 
as contained in the Constitution of England, 
which instrument the work pretended to 
describe. Dire experience has proven the 



24 The New Agrarianism 

fallacy of the theory so far as municipalities 
are concerned. Separation of the powers 
is a clog on efficiency, and renders possible 
practically all the evils that can be charged 
to maladministration in municipal affairs. 
Cities are corporations with large and 
diverse business interests to be cared for, and, 
because their functions are of a public charac- 
ter, no person who has the best interests of the 
municipality at heart would suggest they be 
conducted differently from private business 
corporations ; and no one who is at all familiar 
with the management of private business cor- 
porations can say truthfully that in the con- 
duct of such corporations the president should 
not take part in the meetings of the board of 
directors. Under the theory of a separation 
of the powers, the mayor has no part in the 
deliberations of the council, nor have the coun- 
cilmen any executive powers. Because the 
system originated in the Southwest and the 
West, sections once famous as the birthplace 
of the wild fantasies advocated by the Green- 
back Labor party and of the free silver fetish, 
should not create prejudice against it. " Can 
there any good thing come out of Nazareth? " 
was once asked concerning the Son of God. 



CHAPTER II 
THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS 

THE agitation against the abuses preva- 
lent in public affairs was already at 
its height when an uneasiness developed in 
regard to the rapid growth in wealth and 
power of industry and commerce, and of the 
railroads. At the close of the Civil War, 
many branches of industry were in an infan- 
tile state. The railroads were of compara- 
tively recent origin, but had already spread 
out in many directions. The old sectional 
question of slavery was forever settled, and 
labor, which had been scarce during the four 
years of war, became plentiful again when 
the million soldiers who had been serving 
in the Northern armies returned to their 
homes and reentered upon their old employ- 
ments; and an era of unexampled expansion 
ensued. Far-seeing men realized the immense 
possibilities to be attained by improving 
25 



26 The New Agrarianism 

and by adding to the railroads and by- 
building additional railroads, and in the 
establishment of new industries such as 
would have the government tariff as a pro- 
tection against foreign competition. The 
energy of these adventurers was soon felt, 
and railroad building began with a rush. 
From 1865 to 1875, thirty-nine thousand 
miles of railroad were built, being more 
than double the entire mileage of the 
country prior to the former year. Small 
railroads and telegraph companies which 
had been constructed to connect a few 
cities and towns, were consolidated and 
formed into great systems extending through 
from two to ten States. In manufacturing, 
the forward movement resulted in new roll- 
ing mills being built in the iron centers, in 
new coal mines being opened in the coal- 
mining districts. In New England, addi- 
tional lines of manufacture were added in 
the cotton and woolen mills. Everywhere 
old establishments were enlarged. The 
manufacturers prospered as they had never 
before prospered; the workmen received 
higher wages than the country had ever 
known. 



The Evolution of Business 2j 

It was during this period of development 
that the change from the private to the cor- 
porate form in business life became marked ; 
and, in the late seventies and early eighties, 
manufacturing concerns old and new began 
largely to be incorporated. Individuals and 
firms had now reached that stage of pros- 
perity where they commenced considering 
means for perpetuating their business and 
limiting their liability; and they took out 
charters wherever there were laws permitting 
this to be done, or they used such means as 
were in their power to bring about the 
enactment of such laws. An evolution in 
the corporation laws of the Northern States 
followed. The purposes for which corpora- 
tions could be created had been limited. 
Outside of the railroads, which in nearly all 
the States were usually created by special 
acts of Assembly, there were few corporations 
chartered under general laws. Uniform cor- 
poration laws applicable to particular classes 
of business were now enacted. New subjects 
of incorporation were added from time to 
time, until in most States any lawful business 
could be incorporated. The amount at 
which corporations could be capitalized was 



28 The New Agrarianism 

constantly made larger, and now in almost 
all the States where charters are taken out 
extensively, there is no limit at all. The 
duration of the corporations was extended, 
and at present can be made perpetual. 

To-day there is hardly a manufacturing 
or mercantile concern of importance in the 
entire country that is not incorporated. A 
new form of fixed wealth has come into 
existence which is universally recognized as 
being as stable as that invested in farms or 
in city real estate. According to the returns 
made under the Tariff Act of 1909, which 
provides for a tax of one per cent, on the net 
income of corporations over and above the 
sum of five thousand dollars, and requires 
returns of such net income to be made an- 
nually, the total number of the corporations, 
together with their aggregate capital stock, 
indebtedness, and net income for the three 
years for which returns have been made, was 
as follows 1 : 



1 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue 
for iqio, Washington, 1910, p. 74; Annual Report of the 
Commissioner of Internal Revenue for iqii, Washington, 
191 1, p. 81; Annual Report of the Commissioner of Internal 
Revenue for IQ12, Washington, 19 12, p. 85. 



The Evolution of Business 29 



Calendar 
Year 


Number of 
Corporations 


Capital Stock 

and 
Indebtedness 


Net 
Income 


1909 
1910 
1911 


262,490 
270,202 
288,352 


$83,705,579,448 
88,601,766,527 
92,230,676,886 


$3,125,481,101 
3,360,250,000 
3,213,707,247 



These figures, except so far as they relate 
to the number of the corporations, are larger 
than the circumstances warrant. There are 
duplications in capitalization and indebted- 
ness and in net income, owing to the fact 
that some of the corporations own stock and 
bonds of other corporations. The amount 
of the capital stock is too large also, because 
some of the corporations are over-capital- 
ized; and for the further reason that in 
many cases, particularly where the corpora- 
tions have just been chartered, the full 
amount of the capital stock has not been 
paid in. No definite figures can be given of 
the actual amount of money invested in the 
stocks and bonds and other forms of in- 
debtedness of corporations, but making a 
deduction of twenty-five per cent, from the 
figures of the Commissioner of Internal 
Revenue, the remainder would probably 
represent approximately the actual amount 



30 The New Agrarianism 

invested in corporations, and would still 
be enormous. The net income would also 
remain colossal in amount. 

Labor, too, had men in its ranks who 
realized that the tendency of modern life 
was toward combination ; that the individual, 
whether employer or employee, could not 
stand alone. They appreciated Longfellow's 
well-remembered admonition : 

All your strength is in your union, 
All your danger is in discord. 

The labor leaders saw that, with the power 
which the great increase in wealth gave the 
employers, the workmen would never be 
able to improve their working conditions, 
reduce their hours of labor, or receive a fair 
recompense for their work, if they continued 
to deal individually with the men who 
employed them; that as a matter of self- 
protection they must present a united front. 
All the trades and callings were therefore 
gradually organized into unions. There had 
been isolated labor organizations for many 
years, but their membership was small and 
their influence limited. The unions now 



The Evolution of Business 31 

spread over the country, and soon there 
were unions of the operating employees on 
the railroads — the locomotive engineers, loco- 
motive firemen, railroad conductors, and 
railroad brakemen. In a few years, the iron 
and steel workers had powerful unions, as 
had the coal miners, the flint-glass workers, 
and the window-glass workers. Then there 
were unions for the building trades, some 
national, others local. The bricklayers had 
their unions, as had the carpenters, the stone- 
masons, the plasterers, and the painters. 
Practically every trade is organized, as are 
also many classes of laborers. 

During the progress of the evolution in 
the industrial and commercial enterprises, 
the shrewd men entrusted with the manage- 
ment saw the immense advantages to be 
derived, in increased profits, from a combina- 
tion of all the interests engaged in the same 
line of manufacture or commerce; and they 
formed such combinations. A tendency 
toward monopoly ensued. The contemplated 
purposes of the creation of these gigantic 
combinations were an object lesson to the 
labor unions. Man is imitative in character, 
and the officials at the head of the labor 



32 The New Agrarianism 

unions at once realized that a new element 
was being introduced into the business 
world which was expected to work wonders 
for the corporations. If this was true of 
corporations, they argued, then why would 
not the same principle apply to labor organi- 
zations ? Besides, a consolidation of the inter- 
ests of labor would serve as a check to any 
undue aggressions which consolidated wealth 
might attempt against labor. They there- 
fore organized national and international 
labor unions. Among the largest consolida- 
tions was the unification of the iron and 
steel workers* unions into the Amalgamated 
Association of Iron and Steel Workers, and 
of the various organizations of coal miners 
into the United Mine Workers of America. 
The greatest combination of all, however, 
was the American Federation of Labor, 
which was a consolidation, under a central 
head, of all the labor unions of the country, 
and which has a membership said to be 
approximately two millions. 

As the people had made their displeasure 
felt in purely political affairs, so also they 
began asserting what they considered their 
rights against the abuses prevailing in the 



The Evolution of Business 33 

management of the railroads and the indus- 
trial corporations. While the railroads were 
new, and the knowledge of their great value 
in facilitating travel and transportation was 
still fresh, the joy of having them out- 
weighed all other considerations. If there 
were any inequitable exactions, they were 
passed over as incidents of far less moment 
than the advantages which the coming of 
the railroads had brought. As new towns 
sprang up and new railroads were built, 
communities having few railroad advantages 
became jealous of those which had more, 
and the railroads in their midst were blamed 
with being unjust. The railroads themselves 
did not always act toward the communities 
which they served with the degree of diplo- 
macy that was perhaps essential. The men 
in control of the railroads found it difficult 
to realize that they were operating under an 
instrument called a charter, which had been 
granted to them by the State, and through 
which they derived valuable privileges and 
benefits not possessed by individuals. They 
failed to remember that with these advan- 
tages there were also obligations, which 
must be observed; that they were only 



34 The New Agrarianism 

trustees for their stockholders and for the 
public as well. The men owning the stock 
of the railroads had been pioneers in their 
fields, and with an acute realization of the 
future value of their properties had ventured 
their money, and being men of great business 
capacity had made their railroads valuable; 
and they entertained the opinion that they 
alone were to be benefited. In many in- 
stances they became arrogant; exorbitant 
rates were charged for passengers and freights ; 
all questions affecting the public as well as 
those involving their own employees were 
treated with a lofty disregard of everything 
but their own advantage. They were ac- 
cused of all sorts of wrongdoing; they were 
said to dominate the politics of States. 
Senators and Congressmen, as well as Gov- 
ernors and members of Legislatures, were 
declared to do their bidding. It was charged 
that the railroads were accomplishing many 
of their purposes by the corrupt use of 
money. The revolution of the railroad 
employees, in 1877, against the railroad 
managements in different parts of the coun- 
try, and particularly in Pittsburgh, brought 
on largely by the domineering spirit of the 



The Evolution of Business 35 

officials, forms a lurid page in the industrial 
history of the United States. r 

Discrimination against persons and places 
in the matter of freight rates occurred daily. 
Some of the shippers received rates less than 
half those charged other shippers. Certain 
shippers received a rate of ten cents per 
hundred pounds, while the published charges 
ranged from eighteen to thirty-seven cents. 
A rate to favored shippers of one fifth the 
regular rate was often made. A high official 
of one of the great railroads testified that 
fifty per cent, of the business going out of 
New York, and ninety per cent, of the 
business going out of Syracuse, was done at 
special rates. 2 Favoritism played a leading 
part in the operation of the railroads, both 
in the granting of special rates for passen- 
gers and for freights. Secret rebates were 
given almost daily. Many of the older 
shippers will recall how, not very many 
years ago, the local freight agents in more 
than one city would call at the offices of 

1 Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate the 
Railroad Riots in July, 1877, Harrisburg, 1878, pp. 1-48. 

2 Federal Regulation of Railway Rates, Albert N. Merritt, 
Boston, 1907, pp. 1-240. 



36 The New Agrarianism 

their customers, their pockets stuffed with 
money, with which the rebates allowed were 
paid. Free passes were given without stint s 
Every through train carried passengers who 
traveled on free passes, and who would 
have considered that they had lost their 
prestige if obliged to pay their fares. Worse 
things were happening; men in very high 
positions were accused of using their of- 
fices for their personal benefit, and to the 
detriment not only of the public but of 
their own stockholders as well. Certain 
offenses charged against the railroad man- 
agers were admitted. Officials and former 
officials of railroad companies acknowledged 
before the Interstate Commerce Commission 
that they had formerly received bribes for 
favoring shippers in the matter of the 
distribution of freight cars. 

Industrial and commercial life is so closely 
interwoven with that of the railroads that 
it is hardly possible that an evil can exist 
in one without being reflected in the other. 
There is no question but that the larger 
number of industrial and mercantile corpora- 
tions, like the railroads, are honestly con- 
ducted, yet it is regrettable that many 



The Evolution of Business 37 

matters have come to light in recent years 
which would indicate that in some of them, 
as in some of the railroads, unprincipled men, 
at least in times past, were in positions of 
trust. It was insinuated that the managers 
were guilty of acts of doubtful propriety; 
that the true amount of profits was concealed 
by them; that they drew salaries dispro- 
portionate to the services performed; that 
they were interested in two or more corpora- 
tions, and used their power in one for their 
own benefit in the other ; that they depressed 
the shares of stock of their company in order 
to be able to purchase, at a lower price, the 
shares of stock of other stockholders who 
were ignorant of its value; that they sold 
their shares of stock, when the shares had 
ceased to be as valuable as formerly, to 
stockholders who were unaware of that 
condition, or to the public. It was taken 
almost as a matter of course when officers 
in financial institutions made profits for 
themselves on securities sold through their 
influence to their own institutions, or on 
loans placed by them with these institutions. 
There were also complaints which were more 
of a public nature. 



38 The New Agrarianism 

In Pennsylvania as well as in many other 
manufacturing States, the proprietors of the 
industrial establishments were said to con- 
duct their manufactories almost regardless 
of the safety and comfort of their employees. 
Work on Sundays was asserted to be the 
rule and not the exception. The political 
acts of the employees were alleged to be 
performed wholly at the dictation of their 
employers. Publishers found it profitable 
to print shocking stories of the oppression 
suffered by the employees at the hands of 
their employers. A new form of human 
slavery was declared to exist in the manu- 
facturing North. The abolitionists of the 
Civil War period never used half the gloomy 
colors in depicting the lot of the black slaves 
of the South as were the hues introduced 
into the pictures drawn by these publishers, 
of the hopelessness of the life led by the 
Northern workmen. Poets of acknowledged 
genius became imbued with the current 
prejudice and lent the complaint an air of 
emotional sentiment ; and it might have been 
Kipling who wrote: 

O white man, white man, what is this — 
This cry of the burdened North? 



The Evolution of Business 39 

The millions reap in the fields all day 

And grind in the mills all night. 
The cities are loud with the feet of care 

From light until morning light. 
Dumb with the fear that their bread will cease 

They cringe to the whip's command, 
Paying their blood to the gilded thing 

That taxes the toil of the land. 1 

The most blatant anarchist could not have 
uttered thoughts tending more to unsettle 
society than do the doctrines promulgated in 
the sinister poem glorifying mobs, of which 
the following is the closing stanza: 

I am the last cry of a land undone, 
The huge abortion of a people's pain, 

I rise and make a way where way was none; 
I am their manhood come to life again. 2 

The United States Government has ever 
been conservative. The great moral wrong 
of slavery was allowed to continue more 
than eighty years before it was abolished; 

'"The Slaves of the North," Edwin Davies Schoon- 
maker, The American Magazine, New York, June, 191 1, 

PP- 378-379- 

3 "The Mob," Edwin Davies Schoonmaker, The 
American Magazine, New York, June, 19 12, p. 198. 



40 The New Agrarianism 

polygamy was not stamped out in Utah 
until over twenty years had elapsed since 
Congress enacted the first law forbidding its 
practice. For years no steps were taken to 
remedy any of the evils existing in the 
management of the railroads and the other 
corporations. The complaints were generally 
charged to the envy of less successful rivals, 
and to the judgment of gloomy pessimists, 
whose incessant mutterings were believed 
to be as devoid of reason as the croakings of 
Poe's raven. 

The farmers in the West alone, impatient 
of government help, made a few sporadic 
efforts to remedy their grievances against 
the railroads. In addition to suffering from 
the policies pursued by the railroads, they 
were in dire distress in other respects, having, 
in their search for free land, settled on what 
was formerly designated the Great American 
Desert, which did not yet respond to their 
method of cultivation. The natural conse- 
quence was that their crops were poor ; and as 
a climax to their misfortune the whole West 
was ravaged by clouds of locusts, and the 
farmers were made penniless. In the hope- 
lessness of their despair these men attempted 



The Evolution of Business 41 

to help themselves by entering politics, 
through the agency of the Granger party. 
Originally formed in 1867, the object of 
the organization was "to advance the social 
needs of the farmers, and combat the eco- 
nomic backwardness of farm life"; but the 
wretchedness existing in the West soon led 
the party into a propaganda of extreme 
radicalism. It was the first political organi- 
zation in the United States which possessed 
the merit of calling attention to the tyranny 
of the railroads, but its radicalism caused it 
to be short-lived. The Farmers' Alliance, 
afterwards known as the Populist or People's 
party, was also born with the object of 
righting the farmers' wrongs, and swept over 
the West and South after Grangerism had 
run its course. It advocated a rigid regula- 
tion, or government ownership, of railroads, 
and laws for the relief of agriculture. This 
party also soon ceased to exist, mainly 
because it favored such fallacious theories 
as the abolition of the national banks, the 
free coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen 
to one, and the unlimited issue of paper 
money based on the security of land. 

The prosperous and conservative East has 



42 The New Agrarianism 

laughed at the Granger party and its suc- 
cessor, the Populist party, but it should bear 
in mind, as has been said by a recent writer, 
that "all radical creeds of the hour are 
packed with truths," 1 and that these much- 
derided parties, must be credited with direct- 
ing public notice to abuses which actually 
existed, and which were growing in enormity. 
Also, the number of the victims of corporate 
wrongdoing was increasing year by year, 
and constantly becoming more vociferous. 
Their cries for help were ceaseless. Public 
sentiment, slow to be moved, was aroused 
at last, and demanded assistance for the 
oppressed from the national government. 
Help came by the enactment of the two laws 
which have caused more discussion, and 
made more history in the American indus- 
trial and commercial world, than perhaps 
all the other laws relating to business affairs 
ever enacted. The first of these laws to be 
placed on the statute books was the one en- 
acted on February 4, 1887, entitled, "An Act 
to Regulate Commerce,' ' commonly called 
the Interstate Commerce Law. The other 

1 " Conservatism and Reform," Mowry Saben, The 
Forum, New York, July, 1912, pp. 35-44. 



The Evolution of Business 43 

was the so-called Sherman Law, passed July 
2, 1890, for the purpose of preventing " trusts 
and combinations in restraint of trade," 
in this respect being declarative of the 
common law relating to monopolies, as it 
has existed for hundreds of years in England, 
and as it still obtains in nearly all the 
States of the Union. Both laws provided 
criminal as well as civil penalties for their 
infraction. 

No greater act of beneficence was ever 
done by man, for man, than the enactment 
of the Interstate Commerce Law. With the 
enormous development in manufacturing and 
commerce, the feature of the law relating to 
rebates on freight rates is alone of incalcu- 
lable value. But the government was cau- 
tious, as well as being fearful of the effect of 
disturbing established customs, and the rail- 
road officials were so influential and plausible 
that for a number of years it was the com- 
mon belief that all business would be ruined 
if the laws were to be strictly enforced. The 
influence of the railroads waned after a 
while, and the general demand for a stricter 
observance of all laws, that had been sweep- 
ing over the country, forced the government 



44 The New Agrarianism 

to begin a vigorous campaign against the 
violators of the Interstate Commerce Law. 
It was now enforced to the letter, to the 
great benefit of the public. The law did not 
give the Interstate Commerce Commission 
the power to establish freight or passenger 
rates, and the people clamored for more 
authority for the Commission, and, the agita- 
tion becoming strenuous, Congress gave the 
Commission the power to determine rates 
whenever complaint should be made of their 
unreasonableness. 

The Sherman Law is Janus-headed in 
effect, one head looking in the direction of 
the illegal combinations of employers, and 
the other at the illegal acts of combinations 
of employees. Stringent as the law is, like 
the Interstate Commerce Law it was for 
years little better than a dead letter. It 
was during this time, too, that the greatest 
of the industrial and mercantile corporations 
came into being. They were generally con- 
solidations, into huge companies, of a num- 
ber of corporations which in their day had 
themselves been considered extremely large, 
and, being bound together in the folds of a 
single charter, were thought to have avoided 



The Evolution of Business 45 



the interdiction against restraint of trade 
and monopoly contained in the Sherman 
Law. Their existence became possible by 
reason of the ever-increasing liberality of the 
corporation laws. The State of New Jersey 
was largely responsible for their birth. Not 
only were her corporation laws most liberal, 
but her judges were equally liberal in con- 
struing them. Being conducted by the 
same men who had been aiming at monopoly 
long before the existence of the Sherman 
Law, the new corporate giants were managed 
on the same lines. The corporations aimed 
to control prices and production, to appor- 
tion business and to apportion territory, by 
the aid of "pools," " holding companies, " 
"selling agencies," "trade agreements," in- 
cluding those agreements called "gentlemen's 
agreements," because, as was ironically said, 
they were never intended to be performed, 
and agreements to sell to a certain class of 
customers at one price and to another class 
of customers at another price. "Pools" 
in earnings from freights and passengers 
were the favorite device among the railroads. 
These subtle schemes were operated openly 
or secretly, according as the men in control 



46 The New Agrarianism 

of the corporations employing them were 
bold or cautious. 

A plan for controlling trade was glee- 
fully described to the writer by a leading 
manufacturer of hardware as having been 
carried out a number of times by his concern, 
acting in conjunction with another corpora- 
tion in the same business. He related that, 
when a competitor became particularly ob- 
noxious on account of selling goods at a 
price considered too low, he and his asso- 
ciate's company would buy the offender's 
establishment and wreck it, and immediately 
advance the price of their own goods ten 
per cent. In this way they would receive 
back in a few months the entire amount paid 
to the competitor. 

The altruism which has been fighting for 
improvement in public life has also been 
making determined efforts to remedy exist- 
ing abuses in industry and commerce. So 
vigorously was the contest carried on that 
panic seized the men who conducted the 
corporations affected, their methods of en- 
riching themselves not having been previously 
questioned. It seemed as if a period of 
chaos had descended upon the industrial 



The Evolution of Business 47 

and commercial world. Of course there were 
other contributing causes. The three years 
from 1904 to 1907 had been years of wild 
speculation in stocks, in lands, in commodi- 
ties of every description. The quarrel among 
the managers of the Equitable Life Assurance 
Society in 1905, the result of which was the 
exposure of scandalous financial conduct and 
mismanagement in this and in at least two 
other great New York life insurance com- 
panies, was perhaps the moving cause of the 
financial disturbance. The Standard Oil 
Company was the earliest, as it was the 
largest and best known, and the most dis- 
liked of the great industrial corporations. 
The people overlooked the fact of its magnifi- 
cent management and believed that most 
of its wealth was acquired by crushing com- 
petitors, and by receiving rebates on the 
freights shipped by it over the railroads, and 
in other devious ways. In 1907, it was 
indicted, under the Interstate Commerce 
Law, at Chicago, in the United States Dis- 
trict Court for the Northern District of 
Illinois, on a charge of having received 
rebates on freight rates. Being found guilty, 
it was fined by a radical judge for the 



48 The New Agrarianism 

appalling sum of twenty-nine million two 
hundred and forty thousand dollars, and 
although the decision was reversed by the 
United States Circuit Court of Appeals, the 
depression occasioned thereby, in financial 
circles, remained. This and the strict en- 
forcement of the Sherman Law alarmed the 
moneyed interests. Loans were called. Se- 
curities began to drop in the New York 
Stock Exchange, and continued to go on 
dropping. Adventurers like Charles W. 
Morse and F. Augustus Heinze had obtained 
control, or a decisive voice in the manage- 
ment, of a number of large New York banks 
and trust companies. A distrust of every- 
thing with which these men were connected 
developed ; hysteria ensued ; runs were begun 
on their banks. Long lines of depositors 
stretched out along the sidewalks waiting 
for an opportunity to get near the banks in 
order to withdraw their deposits. A number 
of banking institutions, headed by the 
Knickerbocker Trust Company, closed their 
doors. Hundreds of thousands of workmen 
were thrown out of employment by the 
closing down of industrial establishments, 
and the discontent which this created spread 



The Evolution of Business 49 

to large areas where no financial disorder 
had taken place, and where the workmen 
did not lack employment. 

In 1908, the Republican National Conven- 
tion promised a revision of the tariff law, and 
as there was a strong feeling, not only in 
the former Populistic Western States, but 
in such hotbeds of protection as Pennsyl- 
vania, that the tariff was unnecessarily high 
on many articles, the general opinion was 
that the tariff, while levied for protection, 
would be greatly reduced. But the majority 
in Congress, with no independent knowl- 
edge before them of the needs of industry 
and influenced by interested manufacturers, 
adopted a line of action opposed to the policy 
of reducing the tariff. They were against a 
change, and were designated " stand-patters," 
and rather gloried in the appellation. They 
did not realize that public sentiment had 
undergone a pronounced change since the 
enactment of the former tariff law. "Let 
well enough alone, " was their motto. It 
was the same old fear of the consequences 
of a change in public policy which had 
inspired James Russell Lowell, after the 
annexation of Texas as a slave State, when 
4 



50 The New Agrarianism 

the slavery question was assuming alarming 
proportions, to write his famous lines, in an 
ineffectual attempt to influence the politi- 
cians of that day to declare against a further 
extension of slavery: 

New occasions teach new duties ; 
Time makes ancient good uncouth ; 
They must upward still, and onward, 
Who would keep abreast of truth. 

When, therefore, the Payne- Aldrich Tariff 
Bill was enacted into a law, a wail of dis- 
appointment went up, and not even Presi- 
dent Taft's hearty endorsement of the 
measure convinced the people that their 
confidence in the party in power had not 
been betrayed; and a strong prejudice against 
President Taft sprang up. A suspicion had 
been also long prevalent that the great 
capitalists in and about New York, col- 
lectively designated by the insidious name 
of "Wall Street," were instrumental in the 
enactment of the laws relating to finance 
and industry, which were framed in their 
interest. It was alleged that this was par- 
ticularly true of the banking laws, national 
and State, which were intentionally so fash- 



The Evolution of Business 51 

ioned as to enable their sponsors, who owned 
the banks, with the aid of the combination 
existing among the banks, called the Clear- 
ing House, to more easily manipulate the 
money markets, and through their domina- 
tion of the New York Stock Exchange to 
control the financial destiny of the United 
States to their own advantage. It was an 
oft-repeated charge that, in order to be able 
to do this unhampered in New York, these 
capitalists had kept all the stock and pro- 
vision exchanges, as well as the clearing 
houses of the entire country, free from 
governmental regulation. The revelations 
concerning New York finance and financiers, 
made before the committee appointed 
by Congress to investigate the United 
States Steel Corporation, ex parte and 
strongly biased as the more damaging 
part of the testimony undoubtedly was, 
confirmed the opinions of those persons who 
were already only too willing to believe ill of 
the persons whom they had long held in 
distrust. 

During the period of unprecedented ex- 
pansion in industry, the relations existing 
between it and its employees had not always 



52 The New Agrarianism 

been harmonious. Organized labor had sev- 
eral times engaged in sanguinary warfare 
against its employers. At Homestead, Penn- 
sylvania, in 1892, the Amalgamated Associa- 
tion of Iron and Steel Workers conducted 
a great strike of the employees of the Car- 
negie Steel Company Limited against a 
reduction in wages. The strike not only 
failed of accomplishing its object but was 
the death-blow to trade-unionism in the 
mills of the Carnegie Steel Company Limited, 
and resulted finally in barring trade-unions 
from all the mills now controlled by the 
United States Steel Corporation. This con- 
flict exercised a wide influence all over the 
United States, particularly on the Presiden- 
tial election of 1892, being potent enough to 
defeat President Harrison for reelection to 
the Presidency. Two years later the em- 
ployees of the railroads centering in Chicago 
went on a strike out of sympathy for the 
striking employees of the Pullman Palace 
Car Company, who had struck against a 
reduction in wages. The use of United 
States troops in suppressing the acts of 
violence occasioned by the strike created 
fierce resentment in the breasts of the strikers 



The Evolution of Business 53 

and their sympathizers over the entire coun- 
try. The employment of soldiers in 1892 
in stamping out the disorder produced by 
the miners of the Cceur d'Alene district of 
Idaho, striking for higher wages, and the 
forcible breaking up of the Colorado strike 
in 1902, when the miners struck for a 
working day of eight hours, also occa- 
sioned the wage-earning classes to become 
restless. 

Conditions in industry were also changing. 
Machinery was being daily installed by 
the use of which a less number of men 
were required for the performance of a 
given quantity of work. Machinery was 
making it constantly less necessary for the 
employment of skilled workmen, common 
laborers taking their places, the skilled 
workmen being reduced in rank or suffering 
a reduction in wages. Another element of far 
greater moment which occasioned the wage- 
earners to look askance at the employers 
of labor, but which a spirit of chivalry 
caused them to refrain from noticing officially, 
was the entry of large numbers of women 
into employments which, but for them, 
would have been taken by men. Formerly 



54 The New Agrarianism 

women had found employment only in the 
textile industries. Now they were employed 
in handwork or in operating light machines, 
in clothing-making, in certain branches of 
iron and steel manufacturing, in the produc- 
tion of electrical apparatus, in glass-making, 
and in a dozen other industries. The uni- 
versal use of the telegraph, the typewriter, 
and the telephone, together with the perfect- 
ing of highly elaborate means of distribution, 
like the departmental stores, also created 
a demand for many thousands of cheap 
women workers. 

The people generally had long been brood- 
ing over existing economic conditions. They 
had looked on aghast when the steel and iron 
industries were consolidated, with capitals 
so fabulous as to stagger the imagination, 
culminating in the organization of the United 
States Steel Corporation with a capitaliza- 
tion in stocks and bonds aggregating about 
one billion four hundred million dollars. 
The rise of thirty-two millionaires over 
night, by the magic of Andrew Carnegie 
when he turned the Carnegie Steel Com- 
pany over to the United States Steel 
Corporation, created numberless vociferous 



The Evolution of Business 55 

pessimists. * They could not understand how 
the creation of so many swollen fortunes was 
possible, if it were not by reason of an undue 
advantage obtained through the tariff or 
some other favorable legislative enactment. 
On every hand mutterings arose. Even 
workers in the Pittsburgh steel and iron 
mills, although not complaining particularly 
about their wages and having always been 
taught to believe in a protective tariff, 
declared that under the existing tariff law 
their employers were receiving more than 
was their just share, as between employer 
and employee. The dissatisfaction increased 
when one or two of the newly made rich men 
appeared in the divorce courts, and when 
others made an ostentatious display of their 
recently acquired wealth by giving dinners 
and entertainments, the cost of which, ac- 
cording to the reports appearing in the 
newspapers, was fabulous. 

From the extraordinary growth, both in 
numbers and size, of large fortunes, the 

1 "Is there Common Ground on which Thoughtful Men 
can Meet on the Trust Question? " Peter S. Grosscup, The 
North American Review, New York, March, 1912, pp. 
293-309. 



56 The New Agrarianism 

people have naturally inferred that wealth 
is being concentrated in the hands of a few 
men. This and the ill-considered or sensa- 
tional statements in regard to the growth of 
great fortunes that are constantly appearing 
in the public prints have led people to believe 
that "the rich are becoming richer and the 
poor poorer." The mere fact that there are 
more very rich men now than formerly, 
however, taken by itself, does not prove, 
according to the leading economists, that 
there is a concentration of wealth, as while 
these men were accumulating their fortunes 
the population was also increasing at a very 
rapid rate, as was also the per capita wealth 
of the country. 

That wealth is or is not being concentrated 
is a technical and statistical problem, and 
difficult of demonstration. G. P. Watkins, 
in an article printed in the Publications of 
the American Statistical Association,* gives 
a critical and dispassionate review of the 
question. This writer contends that while 

1 "An Interpretation of Certain Statistical Evidence of 
Concentration of Wealth," G. P. Watkins, Publications 
of the American Statistical Association, Boston, No. 8l, 
1908, pp. 27-55. 



The Evolution of Business 57 

there is a "tendency to concentration or to 
an increase in large fortunes," it is not a 
matter of recent growth, but has been in 
progress for fifty years. In Massachusetts, 
the only State for which reliable data could 
be obtained, which, however, cover only the 
period beginning with 1829 and ending with 
1 89 1, a time prior to the greatest growth of 
wealth in the United States, the concentra- 
tion in 1890 was less than in 1880; and the 
greatest concentration took place in the 
thirty years preceding the Civil War. Mr. 
Watkins further demonstrates that concen- 
tration of wealth is not peculiar to the 
United States; that it is taking place in all 
the leading countries of Europe; and, not- 
withstanding the fact that the United States 
has in the last fifteen years produced great 
numbers of extremely large fortunes, the 
concentration of wealth in this country is 
less than in the United Kingdom. Mr. 
Watkins admits that the concentration of 
wealth is the result of increased activity 
in modern industry. He refutes the oft- 
repeated assertion that, by the concentra- 
tion of wealth in the United States, the poor 
have become relatively less well to do than 



v- 



58 The New Agrarianism 

formerly. On the contrary, he declares that 
all the evidence tends to show that the 
poor have, "on the whole, probably gained 
absolutely," and that their income has 
been increasing with every decade. 

The Englishman, D. H. Macgregor, J agrees 
in the conclusions of Mr. Watkins in regard 
to the condition of the poor, and quotes 
with approval the statement of that other 
Englishman, Sir Robert Giffin, that "the 
poor are to some smaller extent fewer, and 
those who remain poor are individually twice 
as well off on the average as they were fifty 
years ago." 

1 The Evolution of Industry, D. H. Macgregor, New 
York, p. 89. 



CHAPTER III 

CULMINATION OF THE DISSATIS- 
FACTION 

THE discontent occasioned by the transi- 
tion of the smaller corporations to the 
ranks of the great ones is but another and 
more extended form of the sentiment which 
found expression in the earlier days of in- 
dustry. The people are ever forgetful, and 
do not recall that conditions such as those 
that the United States is now passing 
through have existed before. They forget 
that by reason of the undreamed-of develop- 
ment in the natural resources of the country 
— the discovery of enormous veins of coal, 
of great beds of iron ore, of rivers of petro- 
leum, of vast volumes of natural gas — a 
large number of wealthy men were created 
long before the appearance of the industrial 
barons of to-day. More than a generation 
has passed since men became wealthy through 
59 



60 The New Agrarianism 

the revolution in steel-making, the applica- 
tion of electricity to the operation of trolley- 
cars, lighting, and machinery, and by the 
invention of such labor-saving devices as the 
telephone and the typewriter. The expansion 
in railroad-building, the consolidation of 
small railroads into large ones, and the 
large ones into great systems, also placed 
large sums of money in the hands of the men 
who promoted those enterprises. The people 
do not bear in mind that, whenever a radical 
change in the manner of manufacturing takes 
place, a readjustment must be had of the 
forces which produce it. They fail to 
remember that such was the case when the 
factory system superseded work in the fam- 
ily, and when machinery took the place of 
hand-power. The present disturbed con- 
dition in industry is not to be compared, in 
disastrous consequences, with the old troubles. 
History does not give too prominent a place 
to the struggle which the industrial workers 
of England made against the introduction 
of the power-loom in weaving at the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century. Nor is 
there much space devoted to the story of 
the resentment which led people to destroy 



Culmination of Dissatisfaction 61 

machinery, to burn mills, to ill-use mill 
workers, and to blame the power-loom for 
the distress occasioned by war and political 
disturbances. It will be necessary to search 
the encyclopedias and works on economics 
to find that, in 1779, Richard Arkwright, the 
inventor of the spinning-frame, had his large 
mill near Chorley destroyed by a mob of 
workingmen because of their antipathy to 
labor-saving machinery. Only a small circle 
of Americans have heard of the Luddite 
Riots which disgraced the counties of York- 
shire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, and Leicester- 
shire at various times between the years 
181 1 and 1 81 6, when mill operatives spent 
their time smashing textile machinery, and 
there were apprehensions of civil war. 

These movements were merely reactionary 
steps, violent though many of them happened 
to be, in the adjustment that was going on in 
industry. Their very violence, while it did 
not benefit the disturbing element, created 
in the breasts of many of those who had no 
interest in the struggle, as is the case in the 
United States to-day, a spirit of sympathy 
for the weaker of the contending parties, 
and a prejudice against the farsight ed men 



62 The New Agrarianism 

who had become wealthy through the adop- 
tion of new methods of manufacture. 

William Garrott Brown, in a discussion of 
the present economic conditions, published 
in The North American Review,* inclines to 
the view that the " discontent is not so much 
with actual, as with relative material con- 
ditions, not so much with actual suffering 
or poverty, as with inequalities, and particu- 
larly inequalities of opportunity. " While 
it is evident that the prevailing discontent 
has been fanned into flame by unscrupulous 
demagogues, shrewdly bent on taking advan- 
tage of a condition to further their own 
ambitions, it is equally true that a large 
part of the people, while suffering no distress, 
actually believe that they are being imposed 
upon. They may be living in comparative 
comfort, but others have so much more than 
the mere comforts of life. They were always 
taught that in the United States every man 
could rise to the height occupied by the great- 
est in the land. Now that every branch of 
industry and commerce has been consolidated 

'"The New Politics," William Garrott Brown, The 
North American Review, New York, November, 1910, pp. 
630-644. 



Culmination of Dissatisfaction 63 

into great units, they believe that the average 
man can no longer hope to reach the top. 
The people may be laboring under a delusion, 
but nevertheless the sentiment that the 
opportunity for rising in the world has been 
taken away from them has become deep- 
rooted. The growth of the fear is being 
encouraged in devious ways. An example 
of this mode of imposition appeared a few 
months ago as a paid advertisement in 
various Denver newspapers. J In this adver- 
tisement a Colorado politician, in announcing 
his candidacy for a seat in the United States 
Senate from that State, proclaimed in broad 
headlines his intention, if elected, "to see 
that the door of opportunity is kept open." 
He failed to explain how he expected to ac- 
complish this task. 

Opportunity has always been the mirage 
in the desert of men's lives, whence they 
have expected the appearance of that chance, 
which, if embraced, was to lead them on to 
fame and fortune. In their opinion all that 
they were required to do was to recognize 
the voice when it spoke: 

1 The Denver Post, August 27,1912; the Denver Republi- 
can, August 27, 1912. 



64 The New Agrarianism 

I am the treasured hope, the dream, the deed; 
The living courage and the faith you need 
To brave the even road of daily toil, 
And master trifles that you else would spoil; 
I am the certain answer to your need. 1 

The widespread belief that this voice has 
been silenced has created a strong prejudice 
against all forms of corporate wealth. There 
is a desire to bring about a return of the 
conditions existing before industry had made 
its great strides, because the people have a 
vague hope that such conditions would 
benefit them. To effect this return they 
have gone into politics as never before. 
They believe that the laws are no longer 
enacted in their interest, and demand the 
right to make them for themselves, without 
the intervention of legislative bodies. In 
the West, this sentiment has crystallized and 
has given form to doctrines, borrowed from 
Switzerland, and advocated twenty years 
ago by the Populist party. They are the 
initiative, by which the electors can originate 
laws; the referendum, by which electors 

^'Opportunity," George W. Gray, The Outlook, New 
York, April 27, 1912, p. 971. 



Culmination of Dissatisfaction 65 

have the right to disaffirm any law already 
enacted, and the recall, by which the electors 
can demand special elections to oust any of 
the elective officers. 

These methods of direct legislation are 
still in an experimental stage. The recall 
has been employed but three times, once 
against the mayor of the city of Los 
Angeles, then against the mayor of the city of 
Seattle, J and lastly against a police judge in 
San Francisco, on all occasions with successful 
results. Municipalities are political divisions 
of the State whose sole object is to carry on 
the many and varied business affairs pertain- 
ing thereto, and in this respect bear a close 
analogy to private business corporations. 
In private business establishments if the 
managing officials fail in their conduct of the 
business, either through lack of capacity or 
honesty, the board of directors removes 
them. The power to remove municipal offi- 
cials should rest somewhere, yet the recall, 
even if safeguarded against being used too 
often or for too many causes, might lead to 

1 "The Recall in Seattle," Burton J. Hendrick, McClure's 
Magazine, New York, October, 191 1, pp. 647-663. 



66 The New Agrarianism 

a very inefficient administration. A simpli- 
fied form of impeachment would seem to be 
more appropriate than the recall. 

The initiative and referendum have been 
in use longer than the recall, having been em- 
ployed for something more than a decade, but 
only in the less populous Western States. 
Oregon with a population largely agricul- 
tural, which in 1910 was only 672,765, is 
the one State which has had them both in 
operation during the whole of that period. I 
In the States of South Dakota, Utah, 
Nevada, Montana, Oklahoma, Colorado, 
Missouri, California, Maine, and Ohio, con- 
stitutional provisions for the initiative and 
referendum have been adopted, but, as little 
or nothing has been done under them in 
those States, no opportunity is afforded to 
study their workings. 

Oregon is the State which seems to serve 
as the model for all the other States when 
taking up the question of grafting the initia- 
tive and referendum on their legal systems. 
Yet the initiative and referendum have not, 

1 "Initiative and Referendum in the United States," 
Frank Foxcroft, The Contemporary Review, London, 
January, 191 1, pp. 11-19. 



Culmination of Dissatisfaction 67 

at this time, entirely purified the political 
atmosphere of Oregon or made all the politi- 
cians of that State honest, as appears from 
the following item published in a Western 
newspaper : 

Salem, Oregon, August 20. — Governor West's 
threatened invasion of Redmond, Crook County, 
at the head of a squad of militiamen, Wednes- 
day, has been precluded by the acceptance of 
the resignations of Redmond's mayor and mar- 
shal by the council last night. A telegram has 
been received by the governor, stating in sub- 
stance that his demand of immediate action at 
Redmond had been complied with. Governor 
West demanded that Mayor H. F. Jones and 
Marshal McClay quit their positions, following 
the conviction of the mayor for gambling. The 
Redmond councilmen stood by their mayor and 
asked for further investigation. Governor West 
telegraphed that he was familiar with the local 
conditions, and that he would visit Redmond 
this week and declare martial law unless the 
officials resigned. 1 

That the initiative and referendum can 
be used for trivial purposes is apparent from 

1 The Montana Daily Record, Helena, Montana, August 
20, 1912. 



68 The New Agrarianism 

the proposed law that was voted for in Oregon 
in 1 9 12, establishing the size of bed sheets in 
hotels. That both trivial and dilatory 
objects can be accomplished through this 
agency would seem to be indicated in a dis- 
patch from Los Angeles, published in an 
Oregon newspaper : 

August 1 6. — The free lunch has won its fight 
for an existence in Los Angeles saloons until 
after the next election at least, and the ordi- 
nance abolishing it will not go into effect 
September 15th. The referendum petition cir- 
culated by produce commission men was handed 
to the city clerk yesterday, bearing 26,500 sig- 
natures, and will act as a stay of execution of 
the council's order until the latter body either 
repeals the law or places it before the people at 
the next election. 1 

Purely vicious legislation can also be 
originated by these means as was recently 
attempted in California. In February, 1 9 1 1 , 
the law permitting race-track gambling was 
repealed by the Legislature. In May, 19 12, 
the horsemen of the State met and deter- 
mined to use the initiative to have a vote 

1 Morning Oregonian, Portland, August 17, 19 12. 



Culmination of Dissatisfaction 69 

of the people on the question of reenacting 
the law. A fund of over $100,000 was said to 
have been raised for the sole purpose of secur- 
ing the signatures necessary to obtain a place 
on the ballot, and instead of securing only 
the requisite 31,000 names to the petitions, 
well-paid canvassers obtained over 59,000. 
Still more serious objections are apparent 
to the impartial observer, which show that 
both the initiative and referendum could 
give rise to a vast amount of ill-considered 
legislation. In Oregon the amount of direct 
legislation has been constantly increasing. 
In 1904 two measures were presented to the 
voters; in 1906 there were eleven; in 1908 
there were nineteen ; in 19 10 there were thirty- 
two; and in 19 12 there were thirty-eight. 
All but six of the measures proposed in 191 2 
were originated either by the initiative or the 
referendum. The volume published by the 
State in 19 12 containing the measures to 
be voted upon, and the arguments for 
and against their adoption, contains 256 
pages. If, for example, the initiative and 
referendum on the Oregon plan were to 
be adopted in such populous States as New 
York with a population in 1910 of 9,113,614, 



70 The New Agrarianism 

and in Pennsylvania with 7,665,111, what 
might be the result? It is reasonable to as- 
sume that the same percentage of the voters of 
New York and Pennsylvania would be inter- 
ested in originating legislation as in Oregon. 
The population of New York is more than 
thirteen times as large as that of Oregon, 
and that of Pennsylvania more than eleven 
times as large. In New York, therefore, 
there is a probability, or at least a possibility, 
that in two years 494 measures would be 
brought forward by the people, and in Penn- 
sylvania 418. This would be in addition 
to the laws enacted by the Legislatures of 
those States on their own initiative. All 
these measures would be required to be 
published by the State where they originated, 
together with arguments in their favor and 
against them. The book required for the pur- 
pose would be of such enormous proportions 
that it would be neither read nor considered. 
The ballot would present another insuperable 
objection. In 191 2 the ballot used in Oregon 
was 34^ inches long by i8J inches wide. The 
ballot required in New York would be thirteen 
times as large as that used in Oregon, or more 
than 37 feet long and over 19 feet in width. 



Culmination of Dissatisfaction 71 

The dimensions would be so great that it 
would be impossible to procure sheets of paper 
sufficiently large for the purpose. It would 
therefore become necessary to print the bal- 
lots in the form of a book, and voting would 
become such an onerous task that few per- 
sons, even the most intelligent, would exercise 
the franchise understandingly. In Penn- 
sylvania the difficulties would be practically 
as great. 

In France during the Great Revolution 
the people had an idea that they could 
cure every ill in existence with their newly 
acquired right to legislate. The Earl of 
Rosebery, in an article published in The 
Fortnightly Review, * thus describes what was 
accomplished : 

For ten years they had been living on high 
aspirations varied by massacre, believing that 
legislation can effect everything, even transform 
human nature; and that taxation can be so ad- 
justed by getting rid of the wealthy as to enrich 
and benefit the poor; worshiping, in fact, the 
silly gods that blight a nation. In five years 
3400 laws had been enacted, enough to make 

1 "The Coming of Bonaparte," Earl of Rosebery, 
The Fortnightly Review, London, July, 1912, pp. 1-14. 



72 The New Agrarianism 

the mouths of modern legislators water, enough 
to convert earth into heaven, were earth con- 
vertible by such means. All that had been 
produced were anarchy, poverty, and discontent. 

From this it is evident that in France, 
with a population (based on the census of 
1801 when it was 26,930,756) x of approxi- 
mately 26,000,000, there were enacted every 
two years during this turbulent period of its 
history an average of 1360 laws, as against 
494 that might be enacted in New York in a 
like period. As New York has only a little 
more than one third the population that 
France had at this time, it would appear 
that with the initiative and referendum in 
operation the people of New York might 
pass proportionately ten per cent, more laws 
than were enacted in France in its bloodiest 
days. Yet France was so surfeited with law- 
making that it called in the Strong Man, 
Napoleon Bonaparte, to give it order at home 
and peace abroad. 

The present method of having the laws 
made by a representative body elected for 

1 The Statesman's Yearbook for 1912, London, 1912, 
pp. 765-766. 



Culmination of Dissatisfaction 73 

that purpose, with all its imperfections, is 
still the only practicable way in which this 
task can be performed. Nevertheless the 
right of the people themselves to express 
their opinion through the ballot on legislative 
matters under certain circumstances, is un- 
questionable. In the constitutional countries 
of Europe, when the political party in power 
in the legislative body is defeated in any 
measure which it is advocating, the legislative 
body is generally dissolved, and a referendum 
is had on the question of sustaining or dis- 
affirming the party's action by the election 
of a new legislative body the complexion of 
which determines whether the acts of the 
former legislative body have been approved 
or disapproved. This form of referendum 
could be employed with satisfactory results 
in the United States if limited strictly to 
cases where the party or the men in power 
in the legislative bodies fail to pass or act 
on bills before them which are supported 
by a certain minority of the membership. 
Its application should also be limited to 
such public questions as government (includ- 
ing the courts), elections, taxation, corpora- 
tions (including railroads), public schools, and 



74 The New Agrarianism 

perhaps a few other subjects. In all these 
cases the governor or other executive officer 
charged with providing for the elections 
should be required, at the request of the 
minority in the legislative bodies or a fixed 
percentage of the same, to see that the pro- 
posed legislation is submitted to the people for 
their decision at the next election. With the 
legislative machinery set in some such groove, 
the danger of a flood of crude legislation 
being poured out on the people at every 
election, as might be the case with the initia- 
tive and the referendum on the Oregon plan, 
would be reduced to a minimum and the in- 
herent defects in the bills as well as their 
constitutionality, would be passed upon 
by the experts who in an ever-growing 
number of States are now recognized as 
being necessary for the proper preparation 
of bills presented for enactment into laws. I 

1 "Legislative Reference," Ethel Cleland, The American 
Political Science Review, Baltimore, May, 19 10, pp. 218- 
220; " Defective Methods of Legislation, "Ernest Bruncken, 
The American Political Science Review, Baltimore, May, 
1909, pp. 166-170; "Legislative Reference Work and 
Its Opportunities," Clinton Rogers Woodruff, Public 
Libraries, Chicago, October, 1908, pp. 300-303. 



CHAPTER IV 
LARGE AND SMALL CORPORATIONS 

IN the East, where more wealth exists than 
in the West, a large part of which is 
invested in corporations, and where cor- 
porate influences have always been strong, 
the discontent has not yet assumed any 
particular form of political action, but is 
expressed by an unreasoning resentment 
against the Republican party, and against 
its candidates. 

"The voice of the people is the voice of 
God," is a sentiment uttered by an old 
Greek poet; but Alexander Pope, writing 
twenty-five hundred years later, bearing in 
mind that, when influenced by passion, 
prejudice or distress, the people sometimes 
serve strange gods and refuse to incline 
their hearts unto the Lord God of Israel, 
paraphrased the ancient idea into: 
75 



76 The New Agrarianism 

The people's voice is odd, 
It is, and it is not, the voice of God. 

The people's judgment is not always accu- 
rate. They have been raising a hue and cry 
about the evils resulting from the establish- 
ment of the gigantic industrial corporations. 
An unbiased consideration of the question 
would discover that the evils complained of 
are not nearly as prejudicial as has been gener- 
ally supposed. In every case where there has 
been a great consolidation of industry, a 
dozen competitors were brought into life 
as a consequence of the consolidation. This 
was true in steel and iron, in coal, in glass of 
all kinds, and of the scores of other combina- 
tions that were formed during the golden 
age of consolidation. 

The census returns for 1910, 1 show that 
the small manufacturing establishments are 
increasing in numbers. Establishments the 
annual value of whose product is less 
than $5000 have increased from 71,791, em- 
ploying 106,353 persons, in 1904, to 93,349» 
employing 142,430 persons, in 1909; those 
whose annual product is $5000 and less 

1 Thirteenth Census of the United States, 19 10, Bulletin, 
"Manufactures," pp. 26-29. 



Large and Small Corporations 77 

than $20,000 have increased during this 
period from 72,791, employing 419,466 per- 
sons, to 86,989, employing 470,075 persons; 
those whose annual product is $20,000 
and less than $100,000 have increased from 
48,096, employing 1,027,047 persons, to 
57,269, employing 1,090,380 persons; those 
whose annual product is $100,000 and less 
than $1,000,000 have increased from 22,246, 
employing 2,515,064 persons, to 27,823, em- 
ploying 2,896,475 persons ; those whose annual 
product is $1,000,000 and over have increased 
from 1900, employing 1,400,453 persons, to 
3061, employing 2,015,686 persons. 

Although it is true that the establishments 
whose annual product amounts to $1,000,000 
or more have increased a little more than 
one third from 1904 to 1909, while those 
under that figure have increased only from 
one sixth to one fourth, yet that very fact 
goes far to prove that the trusts are meeting 
with stern competition, as the new concerns 
doing over $1,000,000 of business annually 
are in nine cases out of ten corporations 
brought into life by the formation of the 
trusts, and for the purpose of taking business 
which the trusts were supposed to control. 



78 The New Agrarianism 

An English writer, John A. Hobson, in the 
latest edition of his book, The Evolution of 
Modern Capitalism , x in a careful study of 
the "Comparative Summary" of manu- 
factures, covering the period from 1880 to 
1900, contained in the report of the Twelfth 
Census of the United States, agrees that 
during this time, also, the large industries 
were not supplanting the small ones. He 
speaks in no uncertain voice: 

"Taking the manufacturing industries of 
the United States, as a whole there seems 
overwhelming proof that no general tendency 
exists favorable to the substitution of great 
factories for small workshops and home 
industry." 

The men who are afraid that all chance 
for the display of initiative has been taken 
away by the formation of the trusts should 
bear in mind that the units composing the 
aggregations of capital called trusts were 
extremely large when the trusts were formed, 
and were themselves the result of evolution. 
The corporations now being organized, in 
order to be able to successfully compete 

1 The Evolution of Modern Capitalism, John A. Hobson, 
London, 1912, pp. 113-116. 



Large and Small Corporations 79 

with the trusts, must have as large a capitali- 
zation as had the units which went to 
make them up; and it has taken as much 
initiative to start the new concerns as it 
did to organize those commenced thirty or 
forty years ago. As indicative of the ever- 
increasing percentage of the business of the 
country that is being done by the new cor- 
porations, and of the losses sustained thereby 
by the trusts, the movement of the steel and 
iron industry may be cited. This industry 
is still considered the barometer by which 
the state of all business is gauged. There- 
fore the report of Herbert Knox Smith, 
Commissioner of Corporations, made on July 
1, 191 1, to the President of the United States, 
on the steel and iron industry is of special 
interest. x 

From this report it will be seen that the 
share of the steel and iron business of the 
United States done by the United States 
Steel Corporation has slowly but steadily 
declined in all but two items since the 

1 United States Steel Corporation, Hearings before the 
Committee on Investigation of United States Steel Cor- 
poration, No. 63, Appendix, Part I, Washington, 1912, 
P- 365* 



80 The New Agrarianism 

organization of that corporation in 1 901. 
The exceptions, which were trifling, were 
pig iron, which increased from 43.2 per 
cent, in 1901 to 43.4 per cent, in 1910, and 
steel rails, which increased from 59.8 per 
cent, in 1901 to 59.9 per cent, in 1910. 
On the other hand, the remaining products 
declined in much greater ratio. Steel ingots 
declined during this period from 65.7 per 
cent, to 54.3 per cent.; structural shapes 
from 62.2 per cent, in 1901 to 47.0 per cent, 
in 1909, the figures for 1910 not being avail- 
able; plates and sheets from 64.6 per cent, in 
1 90 1 to 49.7 per cent, in 1909, the figures for 
1 910 not being available; black plate from 

79.8 per cent, in 1901 to 52.9 percent, in 1910; 
coated tin mill products from 73.1 per cent, 
in 1901 to 61. 1 per cent, in 1910; black and 
coated sheets from 67.3 per cent, in 1901 to 

38.9 per cent, in 1910; wire rods from yy.7 
per cent, in 1901 to 67.3 per cent, in 191 o; 
wire nails from 68.1 per cent, in 1901 to 55.5 
per cent, in 1910; wrought pipe and tubes 
from 57.2 per cent, in 1901 to 38.2 per cent, 
in 1 910; and seamless tubes from 82.8 per 
cent, in 1901 to 55.3 per cent, in 1910. 

That which occurred after the formation 



Large and Small Corporations 81 

of the United States Steel Corporation also 
took place, only with more pronounced vigor, 
with the other large corporations organized 
during the time of the great industrial ex- 
pansion. They also lost to the new corpora- 
tions a percentage of the business formerly 
controlled by them. The most potent rea- 
son for the successful rise of so many 
competitors to the larger corporations is 
because in the smaller concerns the owners 
are in direct control and give the business 
their personal attention, in consequence of 
which much greater success is attained than 
is possible in the huge ones, with the owners 
living far away, and the operation committed 
to the care of men whose only interest is 
in the salaries which they draw. 

Pittsburgh is the center of the steel and 
iron industry, where more millionaires were 
created by the readjustment, and the re- 
capitalization upon recapitalization of that 
industry, than by the readjustment of any 
other industry in the world, and is likewise 
strongly typical of all the other large cities 
where great industries were consolidated. 
Also the writer, being a resident of Pittsburgh, 
is more familiar with industrial affairs there 



82 The New Agrarianism 

than with those of any other city in the 
United States, by reason of which his views of 
conditions as they obtain in Pittsburgh will 
have more value than if he attempted to 
write about the great combinations made in 
other cities during the high-tide of promo- 
tion. In Pittsburgh, in the year and a half 
ending with July, 1900, perhaps an even 
dozen large consolidations were effected, 
with capitals ranging from two million 
dollars to sixty million dollars, by which 
there were united the interests controlling 
the manufacture of steel railway cars, beer, 
ice, stoves, window glass, glass tableware, 
fireproofing, sanitary goods, crucible steel, 
and the mining of coal, a corporation being 
formed to take over the mines shipping coal 
by rail, and another to take over the mines 
shipping coal by the rivers. 

More than twelve years have now elapsed 
since these consolidations came into life, and 
what has been their history? How long did 
they continue to prosper? Some of them 
only long enough for their promoters to sell 
the stocks owned by them ! Competition de- 
veloped almost immediately, and the ex- 
pected profits, except to the promoters, 



Large and Small Corporations 83 

failed to materialize. New steel and iron 
mills were built, some with the expectation 
that the United States Steel Corporation 
would soon become the purchaser at ad- 
vanced prices in order to eliminate com- 
petition, others through honest motives. 
Another concern for building steel railway- 
cars was organized, scores of new coal 
mines were opened, breweries sprang up on 
every side of the brewery trust, which later, 
together with breweries which had been 
left out of the combination of the beer 
interests, were formed into a new consolida- 
tion. All the consolidated industries met 
with vigorous young competitors and their 
share of the business became constantly 
less. The latest brewery consolidation went 
into the hands of a receiver where it re- 
mained for more than a year. 

The influence in Pittsburgh of these com- 
binations of capital as preponderating fac- 
tors in industry was short-lived. Five 
of them paid dividends on their common 
stock when first organized, but these were 
soon discontinued. The Pittsburgh Stove 
and Range Company was probably the first 
company to stop the payment of dividends, 



84 The New Agrarianism 

the company never having paid more than 
two dividends, and these being on the pre- 
ferred stock. No more dividends were paid 
on the Consolidated Ice Company's common 
stock after January, 1902. The American 
Window Glass Company stopped paying divi- 
dends on its common stock in January, 1903; 
the National Fireprooflng Company on its 
common stock in August, 1903; the Ameri- 
can Window Glass Company on its preferred 
stock in March, 1903; the Crucible Steel 
Company on its preferred stock in December, 
1903; the Monongahela River Consolidated 
Coal and Coke Company on its preferred 
stock in July, 1904; the Pittsburgh Coal 
Company on its preferred stock in July, 
1905; the National Fireprooflng Company 
on its preferred stock in July, 1905. After 
the lapse of several years, four of the com- 
panies resumed the payment of dividends, 
but only on their preferred stocks, and at 
rates less than the rates paid at the begin- 
ning, which have since varied in different 
years. Millions upon millions of dollars have 
been lost in these ventures, and many mil- 
lionaires of yesterday are comparatively poor 
men to-day; but the public, which is de- 



Large and Small Corporations 85 

crying all combinations, was not injured. The 
question of monopoly was not involved, 
prices were not raised ; the field for enterprise, 
instead of being taken away, was widened. 

These facts tend to prove that not only 
in Pittsburgh, but all over the country, 
opportunities for establishing new industries 
are as numerous as ever. The public ought 
also to bear in mind that the dormant 
natural resources of the United States are 
still almost limitless. New fields of petroleum 
are daily being discovered in California, in 
Oklahoma, in Louisiana; new coal mines are 
being opened, not only in Pennsylvania, but 
in the Middle and Far Western States. The 
amount of coal already mined in this country, 
according to a calculation furnished by the 
United States Geological Survey, is less 
than 0.5 per cent, of the original supply. 1 The 
iron-ore fields of Michigan and Minnesota 
are not nearly all owned by the United 
States Steel Corporation ; the deposits of gold 
and silver, and lead and copper, are not all 
controlled by the bonanza kings of the West. 
Nor should it be forgotten that new inven- 

1 The Production of Coal in iqii, Edward W. Parker, 
Washington, 1912, p. 29. 



86 The New Agrarianism 

tions are being made constantly. The men 
of enterprise and ability of to-day have 
still the same field for their endeavors as had 
the men whose ascent to affluence has 
caused so much of the recent agitation against 
the concentration of industry and commerce. 
But to be successful, these men of enter- 
prise and ability must have the same genius 
for overcoming difficulties as that possessed 
by the older generation of business men ; also 
they must possess the same dogged persever- 
ance which is willing to meet and combat for 
many barren years the pains and tribulations 
required in establishing new enterprises. 
They must be able to overcome the despair 
which is apt to seize upon them when the 
discovery is made that the cost of establish- 
ing the enterprise has far exceeded the 
estimated amount ; that mistakes were made 
in the construction of the plant and in 
its operation ; that purchasers for the goods 
manufactured are slow in offering their 
patronage. They must also be imbued 
with the cooperative spirit. No impor- 
tant enterprise that was not the result of 
many years of growth was ever success- 
fully launched without the cooperation of a 



Large and Small Corporations 87 

number of persons. This is also true of 
many of the smaller enterprises. Men who 
are now verging toward middle age remem- 
ber that, during their childhood, their fathers, 
whether men of wealth or only mechanics 
employed in a shop or factory or on a rail- 
road, united with a group of other men who 
moved in the same circle with themselves, 
and invested their twenty-five or fifty or 
one hundred dollars in a partnership — there 
not being at this time any law under 
which they could become incorporated — 
the object of which was to drill for pe- 
troleum in Pennsylvania or West Virginia, 
to lay out town-sites in Indiana or Illinois, 
to open copper or lead or silver or gold 
mines somewhere out in the West. Coop- 
eration among this class of investors has 
been reduced only slightly by the indict- 
ments which have recently been obtained 
against numerous dishonest promoters, at 
the instance of the United States Govern- 
ment. 

There is an undue prejudice against the 
corporations. A good way of measuring this 
sentiment is to note the result of litigation 
pending in the courts before juries, in which 



88 The New Agrarianism 

corporations appear on one side of the contro- 
versy and individuals on the other. Every 
lawyer and every layman who is familiar 
with the proceedings before the courts 
knows that the ordinary jury always resolves 
any existing doubt in favor of the non- 
corporate litigant. It is this inborn bias, 
which perhaps originated in a desire to favor 
the supposed weaker party in a controversy, 
that was the primary cause of the agitation 
against the corporations. Also prominent 
examples, among the managements of the 
corporations, of greed for the accumulation of 
money, without regard to private rights, has 
no doubt increased the original dislike. The 
selfish or careless manner in which the large 
corporations looked after the safety and com- 
fort of their employees was another cause 
that brought them into disrepute. A rage for 
repression has been sweeping over the coun- 
try, caused as much by the ill-feeling existing 
against the corporations as by reason of any 
actual wrongs committed by them. 

When the factory system succeeded work 
in the home in England, and great hardships 
to the working classes ensued, the English 
statesmen did not attempt to suppress the 



Large and Small Corporations 89 

factories, but set about preparing laws for 
their regulation and for ameliorating the 
condition of the work-people. The United 
States Government proceeded in a different 
way. It spent millions of dollars in prose- 
cuting the large corporations suspected of 
monopolistic tendencies. At its instance, 
the two greatest of the earlier trusts, the 
Standard Oil Company and the American 
Tobacco Company, were dissolved by decrees 
of the United States Supreme Court. The 
Standard Oil Company was separated into 
thirty-three companies, and the stock ap- 
portioned among the stockholders in pro- 
portion to their holdings in the parent 
company. x The American Tobacco Company 
was divided into fourteen separate and 
independent companies. 

No one of them having control or dominance 
in the trade as to any of the products manu- 
factured by it; no one of them having any 
dominance or controlling position as to the pur- 
chase of raw material of any kind; no one of 
them having any interest by way of ownership 
of stocks or otherwise in any other of them or 
otherwise in any of them, and each of them 

x The Outlook, New York, August 12, 191 1, pp. 803-804. 



90 The New Agrarianism 

being a company, whether now existing or to 
be created, under a plan in which the American 
Tobacco Company will have no interest. 1 

What has been the result ? The aggregate 
price of the stocks of the separated companies 
is higher now than before the segregation; 
the price of the commodities manufac- 
tured by them is at least not lower, and in 
some instances is higher. What else could 
be expected when the stocks are still owned 
by the same persons as before the separa- 
tion? Where has the public benefited by 
this mode of attack? There are, however, 
grave faults to be corrected, the principal 
ones so far as the public is concerned being 
those aimed at in the decisions rendered in 
the Standard Oil Company and the American 
Tobacco Company cases. 

Without pretending to suggest a remedy 
for the evils existing in corporate manage- 
ment, the one most often spoken of — namely, 
stringent government regulation — seems to 
be the most appropriate. If Congress can 
regulate railroad rates through a commission, 
could there not also be created a commission 

1 The American Review of Reviews, New York, Novem- 
ber, 191 1, p. 536. 



Large and Small Corporations 91 

to regulate the prices of the products of the 
great corporations if they were advanced 
or lowered unduly? In the young Common- 
wealth of Australia they have laws which go 
far in this direction. When the Confedera- 
tion was formed in 1901, provision was 
made in its constitution for an interstate 
commission, a bill for whose appointment and 
defining its powers became a law in 1912. 
Besides having powers somewhat similar to 
those possessed by our own Interstate Com- 
merce Commission, it has broad powers over 
industry and trade. It has the right in the 
public interest to investigate the production 
of and trade in commodities, the prices of 
commodities, profits of trade and manufac- 
ture, labor, employment and unemployment, 
and wages. 1 It is a big subject and full 
of difficulties, but where there is a will 
to do a thing a way can always be devised 
to do it. Since 1903 the Department of 
Commerce has been in existence as a de- 
partment of the national government, hav- 

1 "A Year of Progress in Australia," E. Verne Richard- 
son, Daily Consular and Trade Reports, May 7, 1913, pp. 
658-660. 



92 The New Agrarianism 

ing power to collect information in regard 
to the organization, conduct, and manage- 
ment of the business of corporations engaged 
in interstate commerce. This country will 
also, no doubt, at some future time have a 
Tariff Commission, whose duty it will be to 
investigate the cost of the production of all 
tariff-protected articles. With these sources 
of information, and with the assistance which 
the Internal Revenue Bureau could render 
by communicating the facts discovered by 
it in the collection of the taxes on the net 
earnings of corporations, the government 
could obtain not merely an approximate, but 
an exact knowledge of the cost of producing 
all articles of commerce and manufacture, 
as well as a knowledge of what would be a 
fair selling-price. The government could 
then prevent any article from being sold 
either too high or too low, for by reducing 
the price of goods below the cost of produc- 
tion as much harm can be done, by forcing 
competitors out of business, as by raising 
the price unduly in order to secure un- 
reasonable profits. This would necessitate 
changes in the Sherman Law. The desired 
alteration in the law could be sooner obtained 



Large and Small Corporations 93 

if fewer of the acts of the corporations were 
veiled in secrecy. Publicity has, until very 
recently, been frowned upon by corporation 
managers. Publicity would give their com- 
petitors, these officials declared, the benefit 
of their superior skill and ability in manage- 
ment. If true, this is one of the obligations 
which corporations assume by virtue of their 
incorporation. In Germany, where the laws 
provide for publicity in the details of organi- 
zation, earnings, and general condition of 
corporations, complaints were made to their 
enactment which were practically the same 
as those advanced against publicity in this 
country, yet Germany's industrial progress 
since that time has been more pronounced 
than ever. Publicity in this country would 
inure to the benefit of those stockholders 
of corporations who have no voice in the 
management, and they would no longer have 
cause for being suspicious of their own 
officers. The employees would also be able 
to learn whether or not they are receiving 
all that they are entitled to as compensation 
for their labor. 

As governmental regulation is considered 
the most appropriate remedy for properly 



94 The New Agrarianism 

ordering the relations of the corporations 
with the public and with their stockholders, 
so, too, regulation by the national govern- 
ment would be of vast benefit in safeguard- 
ing the lives and limbs and the health of the 
persons employed by the corporations. As 
proof of what a strong central authority can 
accomplish, when compared with the volun- 
tary and often ill- directed efforts, as well as 
the neglect, of corporations and individuals, 
it is only necessary to advert to what 
has been done to benefit the employees 
in another branch of industry since the 
government supervision of it began. The 
deaths from mining accidents are very much 
larger in the United States than in the 
European countries, the percentage of deaths 
being more than three times as great as in 
France, Belgium, and Austria, two and a half 
times as great as in England, and one and a 
half times as great as in Prussia. In 1907, 
3197 men lost their lives in mining accidents 
in this country. The next year Congress 
authorized the government to investigate the 
causes of the accidents. So beneficial was 
the work done under the government's direc- 
tion, that, in 19 10, the death roll had been 



Large and Small Corporations 95 

reduced to 2834. The same year there was 
established the Bureau of Mines; and in 191 1 
the deaths from mining accidents had fallen 
to 2517. 1 The work outlined for this Bureau, 
which is largely educative, as explained in 
the first annual report of the director, 2 
would, with the changes necessary for differ- 
ent conditions, apply almost as well to other 
lines of industry as to mining. 

1 Preliminary Statements on Coal-Mine Accidents in the 
United Stales, 1910, 191 1, and January to April, 1912, 
Washington, 1912, pp. 4-5. 

2 First Annual Report of the Director of the Bureau of 
Mines, ign, Washington, 1912, pp. 3-57. 



CHAPTER V 

FUNDAMENTAL CAUSE OF THE COM- 
PLAINTS AGAINST CORPORATE 
WEALTH 

THE growing antipathy to the methods of 
government, and the complaints against 
the combinations of wealth, and the situa- 
tion brought about by them, are not local 
to the United States, but are as much in 
evidence in the industrial countries of Europe 
as here, and for the same reasons. While 
it is universally admitted that the discontent 
is due to many causes, yet the real underlying 
one is said to be the constantly rising cost 
of living. 1 That the unrest in Europe is 
attributable to this cause is corroborated by 
no less an authority than that of David 

1 "The Cost of Living," The World To-Day, New York, 
March, 1910, I. "In the United States," L. M. Byles, 
pp. 318-322; II. "In Europe," Frederick Austin Ogg, 
pp. 322-326. 

96 



Complaints against Wealth 97 

Lloyd George, the daring Chancellor of the 
English Exchequer, who in a carefully 
worded interview, probably intended to 
minimize the extent of the increase in the 
cost of living in England, published in The 
Outlook,* declared: 

"Here in Britain we have no agitation 
against high prices. Prices have increased 
here, but to a much smaller extent than 
elsewhere. The ever-increasing prices of the 
necessaries of life, which exist abroad, are 
the mainspring of the distress of the masses. " 

As long ago as 1904, the English Board of 
Trade instituted an investigation into the 
fact of the existence of a constant increase 
in the cost of living, which was completed 
in 1908, and covered England, Germany, 
France, Belgium, and the United States. A 
report was published 2 which is probably the 
most exhaustive study of this subject yet 
attempted. From this it is apparent that 
the cost of living in all of these countries 

1 "The Square Deal in England," Robert Donald, The 
Outlook, New York, June 22, 1912, pp. 397-404. 

2 "Cost of Living in Great Britain, Germany, France, 
Belgium, and the United States," Bulletin of the Bureau 
of Labor, No. 93, Washington, 1911, pp. 500-570. 



98 The New Agrarianism 

has distinctly advanced, and that, too, in a 
greater ratio than the wages of the employed. 

The principal items that make up the 
cost of living are house rent, if one is a renter, 
the interest and other expenses chargeable 
on the amount invested in a dwelling, if one 
owns the house he lives in, clothing and 
food. Of all these items food is by far the 
largest in the ordinary family in the United 
States, being, according to the figures pro- 
duced by the Bureau of Labor 1 42.54 per 
cent, of the entire expenditure. 

In this country, every one who either 
maintains a household or lives in a hotel 
or boarding house knows from personal 
experience that the cost of food has ad- 
vanced very materially in the last few 
years. A report on the prices of food- 
stuffs was published by the United States 
Government. 2 The reports there given are 
of the wholesale prices only, but as retail 
prices follow the changes in the wholesale 
prices rather closely, the record of the 

1 Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 77, Washington, 
1908, p. 198. 

2 "Wholesale Prices, 1890 to 19 10," Bulletin of the 
Bureau of Labor, No. 93, Washington, 191 1, pp. 309-324. 



Complaints against Wealth 99 

wholesale prices applies for all practical 
purposes to the retail prices as well. The 
food prices given are for forty-eight articles 
and comprise such staples as bread, meat, 
fish, sugar, salt, starch, molasses, vinegar, 
butter, milk, eggs, lard, and cheese. The 
advance is alarming, the increase in the aver- 
age cost of food from 1896, when the lowest 
prices since 1890 prevailed, to 1910 being 
53.6 per cent.; and in December, 1910 the 
average price was 53.8 per cent, higher than 
the average price for 1896. In December, 
1910, the average price was 0.2 per cent, 
higher than the average price for 19 10, and 
3.4 per cent, higher than the average price 
in 1909. 

A statement of the increase in the cost of 
foodstuffs compared with earnings was pre- 
pared in great detail by the Bureau of Labor, l 
but only covers the period from 1890 to 1907. 
From this it appears that the average 
retail price of thirty staple food commodities 
sold in the principal industrial localities of 
the United States, situated in thirty-two 
States and the District of Columbia, ad- 

1 Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 77, Washington, 
1908, pp. 4-6. 



ioo The New Agrarianism 

vanced 26.3 per cent, from 1896 to 1907. 

The wages during this period, computed 
from data relating to the principal distinc- 
tive wage- working occupations in the leading 
manufacturing and mechanical industries 
of the United States, increased only 23 
per cent., being higher in 1907 than during 
any year beginning with 1890; and a full 
week's earnings would buy 0.9 per cent, less 
food in 1907 than in 1906, and buy less than 
in any of the five years preceding 1906. 

The Bureau of Labor brought its investi- 
gations of the increase in the price of 
foodstuffs down to and including the year 

191 1. Prices were obtained for fifteen staple 
food commodities sold in the thirty-nine 
principal industrial cities of the United 
States, situated in thirty-two States. From 
1907 to 191 1 the average price increased 
14.8 per cent. In 191 1 the first decrease 
since 1890 took place, the average price, 
however, being only 1.1 per cent, below that 
of 1910. 1 This seems to have been only a 
temporary condition, the latest Bulletin to 

1 "Retail Prices 1890 to 191 1," Bulletin of the United 
States Bureau of Labor, Whole Number 105, Washington, 

1912, pp. 5-19. 



Complaints against Wealth 101 

be issued by the Bureau of Labor, ■ showing 
that during the first six months of 1912 
the prices of foodstuffs again advanced, 
the average advance being 2.9 per cent, over 
191 1 and 2.1 per cent, over 1910. No 
authentic figures are at hand in regard to 
the increase in wages since 1907. The 
government has in preparation a report on 
the subject, but it has not yet been published. 
However, it is doubtful if wages advanced 
in the same ratio as the cost of living, except 
perhaps during a part of 1912, when there 
was an abnormal increase in the wages of 
common laborers in certain of the industrial 
centers, owing to the sudden expansion of 
industry following a period of comparative 
stagnation, when through lack of employment 
many of the foreign laborers had returned 
to their old homes in Europe. Already this 
condition has been remedied by a large 
influx of foreign immigration. 

A knowledge of the cause of any trouble 
will often render the task of providing a 
remedy easier. In the last few years politi- 

1 "Retail Prices 1890 to June, 1912," Bulletin of the 
United Slates Bureau of Labor, Whole Number 106, 
Washington, 1912, p. 14. 



V 



102 The New Agrarianism 

cians and economic writers, as well as dema- 
gogues, have said that the increase in the 
cost of food was caused by the over-produc- 
tion of gold; that it was not caused by the 
over-production of gold, that it was brought 
about by the tariff, by cold storage, by the 
trusts. In 1906, however, the first public 
announcement of the most obvious cause of 
the increased cost of living was made to the 
world, and a warning given of the danger 
which menaced the welfare of the human 
race. James J. Hill, a colossus in American 
finance, and a practical political economist, 
was the man who sounded the alarm, and 
told of the unequal progress that was being 
made between industry and agriculture, and 
that the production of foodstuffs was not 
keeping pace with the increase in the num- 
bers of the consuming class who were not 
producers. At the same time Mr. Hill gave 
notice that a readjustment must be had. 1 
Since then hundreds of men and institutions, 
public and private, have been investigating 
the subject. 2 President Roosevelt became 

1 Highways of Progress, James J. Hill, New York, 19 10, 
PP. 3-44- 

2 "The Cost of Living," Henry Pratt Fairchild, The 



Complaints against Wealth 103 

interested, and in August, 1908, he ap- 
pointed a commission on Country Life, which 
after holding hearings in various parts of the 
country from Massachusetts to Oregon and 
California, andfrom Minnesota to Texas, early 
the next year made its report 1 in which it 
suggested that there be made an exhaustive 
study or survey of all the conditions that 
surround the business of farming and the 
people who live in the country; that a 
national extension work be organized, and 
that a general campaign of rural progress 
be undertaken. 

That Mr. Hill was correct in the theory 



Popular Science Monthly, New York, April, 191 1, pp. 377- 
380; "Food Prices and the Cost of Living," J. D. Magee, 
The Journal of Political Economy, Chicago, April, 1910, 
pp. 294-308; "Political Consistency and the Cost of 
Living, " W. Jett Lauck, The Journal of Political Economy, 
Chicago, May, 19 10, pp. 392-394; "The Price Fallacy of 
High Costs," Dr. Ralph H. Hess, The Popular Science 
Monthly, New York, June, 1912, pp. 493-498; "Is the 
High Cost of Living Going Higher?" Irving Fisher, The 
North American Review, New York, December, 1912, pp. 
740-758; "The Rise in Prices and the Quantity Theory 
of Money," Prof. J. S. Nicholson, The Quarterly Re- 
view, London, October, 1912, pp. 482-498. 

1 Report of the Country Life Commission, Washington, 
1909, pp. 13-65. 



104 The New Agrarianism 

advanced by him is amply verified by the 
situation produced in the transition of such 
nations as England and Germany from agri- 
cultural to industrial countries, and by the 
changes now going on in such other European 
countries as Belgium, France, Austria- 
Hungary, and even Russia, where industry 
is making inroads on agriculture. The 
United States Government statistics are over- 
whelmingly in favor of Mr. Hill's idea. 
That the population of this country which 
produces the foodstuffs is not increasing in 
the same ratio as the population engaged in 
industry has been evident for some decades, 
as will be seen by even a cursory inspection 
of the Bulletin on the Population of Cities 
of the Thirteenth Census. I The figures show 
that in the last forty years the population 
of the cities as compared with that of the 
country has risen steadily: In 1880 it was 
29.5 per cent.; in 1890, 36.1 per cent.; in 
1900, 40.5 per cent., and, in 19 10, 46.3 per 
cent, or nearly one half of the entire popula- 
tion of the United States. There being less 
persons relatively engaged in the production 

1 Thirteenth Census of the United States, 19 10, Bulletin, 
"Population of Cities," p. 3. 



Complaints against Wealth 105 

of food-stuffs than formerly, and the city or 
consuming population being greater in the 
same ratio that the farmers are less, the effect 
has become apparent in different ways. The 
high cost of foodstuffs has already been 
commented on. The great increase in the 
wealth of the people — largely the result of 
the expansion of industry — as indicated by 
the reports of the last three censuses, is 
another cause. In 1880 the per capita 
wealth of the country was $870.20; in 1890, 
$1035-57; in I900> $1164.79, and, while the 
figures for 1910 have not yet been published, 
the per capita wealth for that year will no 
doubt show an increase over 1900. This 
has led to extravagance in the expenditure of 
money which again is reflected in the higher 
cost of living. It is a well-known fact that 
man spends more money, whether he be a 
business man or a day laborer, when he has 
plenty than when he has little, and this is 
particularly true in regard to the money 
spent for food. Wheat being the leading 
staple article used for food, this impulse 
becomes apparent in the demand arising for 
that cereal. Also there occur in the United 
States since manufacturing and transporta- 



106 The New Agrarianism 

tion have made such tremendous progress, 
years when business prosperity far exceeds 
that of other years, and again when business 
is in such a state of depression that in some 
of the manufacturing districts absolute want 
stalks abroad. These alternations necessar- 
ily mean that the demand for wheat fluctu- 
ates with business conditions, and that it 
increases or decreases according as industry 
is prosperous or otherwise. 

The Department of Agriculture has pre- 
pared statements showing the amount of 
wheat consumed per capita for a period of 
years, which bear out the contention that 
the people consume more wheat when busi- 
ness is good than when it is bad. 1 In 1910, 
being the last year for which there is any 
report, when the per capita wheat consump- 
tion was only 5.03 bushels, there was a decided 
depression in manufacturing; in 1905, when 
the consumption was 6.14 bushels, the coun- 
try was rapidly speeding toward that boom 
which collapsed two years later. The years 

1 Crop Reporter, published by authority of the Secre- 
tary of Agriculture, January, 19 12, p. 6; Foreign Com- 
merce and Navigation of the United States for igo6 t 
Washington, 1907, p. 26. 



Complaints against Wealth 107 

1900, when the consumption was 4.74 bushels, 
and 1895, when it was 4.59 bushels, were 
both years of pronounced business depres- 
sion. In the two years, 1890, when the 
consumption was 6.09 bushels, and 1885, 
when it was 6.77 bushels, the country was 
extremely prosperous. These figures do not 
furnish any proof of a permanent increase 
in the consumption of wheat, but they do 
indicate taking a year of high consump- 
tion like 1905, when it was 6.14 bushels per 
capita, and comparing it with a moderate 
year like 19 10, when the per capita consump- 
tion was 5.03 bushels, that there are years, 
which occur frequently, when the per capita 
consumption. of wheat is at least 1.11 bushels 
higher than in other years. This would make 
the consumption in years such as 1905 for 
the entire population (using the census re- 
turns for 1 910 when the population was 
91,972,266) 102,089,215 bushels higher than 
in years like 19 10, an amount larger than the 
entire quantity of wheat exported either for 
the year 1905 when it was 97,609,000 bushels, 
or for the year 19 10 when it was 69,311,000 
bushels. There is current an expression of 
present-day business morality indicating 



108 The New Agrarianism 

that during times of greatest demand the 
highest prices can be charged. Consequently 
these periodical increases in the consumption 
of wheat have a tendency to not only advance 
the prices for those years, but to also increase 
the average price for the periods of years of 
which they are part. The same cause that 
affects the price of wheat also influences the 
price of the other food commodities in an 
equal degree. 

The last reason for believing that there 
is an unequal increase in the production of 
foodstuffs when compared with the increase 
of population is that for the last few years, 
while the crops have been up to the average, 
there has been a steady decline in the 
exports of the leading foodstuffs. The aver- 
age number of bushels of wheat and flour 
exported annually in the five years ending 
June 30, 1909, was only 115,000,000 bushels 
as compared with 192,000,000 bushels ex- 
ported in the five years ending June 30, 1904. 
This decrease in exports resulted in spite of an 
increase in the annual production from an 
average of 625,100,000 bushels for the five 
years ending with 1903 to 655,800,000 
bushels for the ^.ve years ending with 1909. 



Complaints against Wealth 109 

While the wheat harvest in 1909 was 737,000,- 
000 bushels, a figure exceeded only once in 
the history of American wheat-growing, the 
exports for the fiscal year ending June 30, 
19 10, reached only 87,364,000 bushels, being 
the smallest since 1877, except during 1905, 
when the crop of 1904 was only 552,000,000 
bushels. The exports of corn have also 
fallen off very largely. For the fiscal year 
1910, although the crop of 2,772,000,000 
bushels was the second largest recorded, only 
36,800,000 bushels were exported, as against 
the average of 48,300,000 bushels for the five 
preceding years. Meat and dairy shipments 
fell from a value of $192,802,000 in 1908, and 
from $166,521,000 in 1909, to $130,632,000 
in 191 o. Cattle and hog exports were 
of the value of only $12,246,000 in 1910, 
as compared with $18,190,000 in 1909 and 
$29,646,000 in 1908. x There has been no 
improvement in this regard during the fiscal 
year 191 1. While the exports of foodstuffs 
and meats taken together show an increase 
of $12,000,000 for the year, the exports 

1 "The Changing Position of American Trade," Thomas 
A. Thacher, The North American Review, New York, 
October, 19 10, pp. 486-492. 



no . The New Agrarianism 

of wheat alone fell from $48,000,000 in 19 10 
to $22,000,000 in 191 1 ; fresh beef from 
$7,750,000 in 1910 to $4,500,000 in 191 1, 
and live cattle from about $18,000,000 in 
1909 to $13,000,000 in 191 1. 1 

1 Annual Review of the Foreign Commerce of the United 
States and Summary Tables of Commerce for iqii, Wash- 
ington, 19 12, pp. 19-20. 



CHAPTER VI 

RELATIVE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE 
IN THE UNITED STATES 

THE year 1880 was epochal in the United 
States in the production of the four lead- 
ing foodstuffs, corn, wheat, oats, and barley. 
The production of these staple articles was 
greater in that year than in any previous year 
in the country's history. It was the year in 
which the emigrants who had swarmed into 
the West first made themselves felt in the 
provision markets of the world. There was 
a tremendous increase over the year 1870, 
which year, so far as corn and wheat were 
concerned, had been, like the year 1880, also 
epochal in the quantity of these cereals pro- 
duced. The great increase in the ten years 
from 1870 to 1880 was brought about not- 
withstanding that during this period plagues 
of locusts appeared in the West, and the 
hi 



ii2 The New Agrarianism 

crops were again and again killed by 
droughts. 

In those early years the percentage of 
increase in the production of the staple crops 
far exceeded the percentage of increase in 
the population. The year 1880 showed an 
increase over 1870 of 57 per cent, in the 
quantity of corn produced, in per cent, in 
wheat, 69 per cent, in oats, and 71 per cent, 
in barley. The increase in the population 
during the same decade was from 38,558,371 
to 50,155,783, or 22.6 per cent. 

By the time the next census was taken the 
pendulum had already swung to the other 
side, and the percentage of increase in popu- 
lation exceeded the percentage of increase 
in crops. For the ten years beginning 
with the phenomenal year 1880, the average 
annual production of corn was 1,680,696,000 
bushels, as against 1,717,435,000 bushels in 
1880, or a decrease of 2 per cent.; of wheat 
439,766,000 bushels, as against 498,550,000 
bushels in 1880, or a decrease of 12 per 
cent. ; of oats 594,969,000 bushels, as against 
417,885,000 bushels in 1880, or an increase of 
42 per cent.; of barley 58,543,000 bushels, 
as against 45,165,000 bushels in 1880, or an 



Progress of Agriculture 113 

increase of 29 per cent. During this decade 
the population increased to 62,622,250, or 
24.9 per cent. For the ten years beginning 
with 1890, the average annual production of 
corn was 1,896,629,000 bushels, or an in- 
crease of 13 per cent, over the average annual 
production for the preceding decade; wheat 
515,374,000 bushels, or an increase of 17 per 
cent. ; oats 726,709,000 bushels, or an increase 
of 22 per cent., and barley 70,975,000 bushels, 
or an increase of 19 per cent. During this 
decade the population of continental United 
States increased to 76,303,387, or 20.7 per 
cent. For the ten years beginning with 1900 
the average annual production of corn was 
2,565,000,000 bushels, or an increase of 35 
per cent, over the average annual production 
for the preceding decade; wheat 676,830,000 
bushels, or an increase of 31 per cent.; oats 
901,718,000 bushels, or an increase of 24 per 
cent., and barley 148,492,000 bushels, or an 
increase of 109 per cent. During this decade 
the population of continental United States 
increased to 91,972,266, or 21.0 per cent. In 
191 1 the yield of corn was 2,531,488,000 
bushels, wheat 621,338,000 bushels, oats 
922,298,000 bushels, and barley 160,240,000 

8 



ii4 The New Agrarianism 

bushels. The population in 191 1 was esti- 
mated by the Census Bureau to be 93,792,509, 
or an increase over 1910 of 2 per cent. 1 

Nor has the area used for farming increased 
in the last thirty years in the same ratio as 
the urban population. The increase in acre- 
age from 1850 to 1900 was from 293,560,614 
acres to 838,591,774 acres; and in 19 10 it had 
risen to 878,798,325 acres. The increase 
from 1850 to i860 was 38.7 per cent.; from 
i860 to 1870, 1 per cent., the Civil War 
retarding farming as well as industry; from 
1870 to 1880, 31.5 per cent.; from 1880 to 
1890, 16.2 per cent.; from 1890 to 1900, 35 
per cent., and from 1900 to 1910, when the 
greatest advance in the price of all food- 
stuffs took place, it was only 4.8 per cent. 2 
The heaviest increases in acreage placed 
under cultivation were during the periods 
extending from 1850 to i860, from 1870 to 
1880, and from 1890 to 1900, and arose from 
the opening for settlement of the new govern- 

1 Statistical Abstract of the United States, iqii, Wash- 
ington, 1912, p. 37. 

2 Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910, Bulletin, 
"Agriculture, Abstract — Farms and Farm Property, by 
States," p. 19. 



Progress of Agriculture 1 1 5 

ment lands in the West, the lands taken up 
in the latest period being practically the 
last of the free government lands that were 
fit for agriculture. These figures show that 
the increase in acreage placed under cultiva- 
tion from 1880 to 19 10 was 63.9 per cent., 
while the increase in the population for the 
same period was 83.3 per cent., or almost 20 
per cent, more than the increase in acreage. 

According to the Thirteenth Census, 1 
there were, in 1910, in the United States, 
6,361,502 farms with an acreage of 878,798,- 
325, of which 478,451,750 acres were im- 
proved. These farms were of an average 
size of 138. 1 acres, and, of the total number, 
4,006,826 were operated by owners and man- 
agers, and 2,354,676 by tenants. The data 
relating to the number of persons engaged 
in agricultural pursuits in 191 o have not yet 
been compiled by the Census Bureau, but 
in 1900, according to the census returns for 
that year, there were 10,381,765 persons over 
the age of ten years employed in agriculture. 
The value of the investments in farms in 

1 Thirteenth Census of the United States, 19 10, Bulletin, 
" Agriculture, Abstract — Farms and Farm Property, by 
States," p. 1. 



n6 The New Agrarianism 

1 9 io, including land, buildings, fences, ma- 
chinery, implements, and live stock, was 
$40,991 ,449,090, as against $20,439,901 , 164 in 
1900, or an increase of 100.5 per cent, in ten 
years. The Census Bureau explains that 
this enormous increase in the value of farm 
property arose from the increase in the value 
of land, which rose from $15.57 per acre in 
1900 to $32.40 per acre in 1910; from farm 
buildings, which increased 77.8 per cent.; 
from implements and machinery, which in- 
creased 68.7 per cent., and from live stock, 
which increased 60.1 per cent. These in- 
creases again were probably brought about 
by reason of the fact that all over the United 
States men who had accumulated wealth in 
industry, became possessed of the desire for 
owning country places, and bought farms, 
causing an advance in farm lands by their 
purchases ; and they have been investing large 
sums in improvements and in live stock. 

The productivity of the land has increased 
in the last twenty years, as is indicated by 
the report of the Secretary of Agriculture 
for 191 o. 1 In this he says: 

1 Yearbook of the United States Department of Agri- 
culture, 1910, Washington, 191 1, pp. 27-28. 



Progress of Agriculture 117 

Dividing the period from 1866 to 1909 into 
four decades and a succeeding short period of 
four years, the yield per acre of corn is shown 
by a study made in the Bureau of Statistics to 
have declined 2.3 per cent, from the first decade 
to the second, declined 8.2 per cent, from the 
second to the third, increased 7.7 per cent, from 
the third to the fourth, and increased 7.1 per 
cent, from the fourth decade to the succeeding 
four- year period. 



The Secretary of Agriculture further points 
out that wheat increased 6.3 per cent, from the 
third to the fourth decade and 9.6 per cent, 
from the fourth decade to the final four-year 
period; cotton, for the same periods, increased 
3.8 per cent, and 0.3 per cent, respectively, 
and tobacco 5.2 per cent, and 9.7 per cent, 
respectively. An increase is also shown to 
have taken place in five other leading crops, 
namely, barley, rye, buckwheat, hay, and 
potatoes. 

From a material point of view, farming 
has not been profitable, and man — however 
ethical writers may condemn the idea — 
insists that the occupation in which he is en- 
gaged be remunerative. According to the De- 



n8 The New Agrarianism 

partment of Agriculture, I the entire value of 
the farm products of the United States in 191 o 
was $8,694,000,000. This amount was earned 
on the farm valuation of $40,991,449,090, 
while the product of manufacturing in the 
same year, 2 on a capital invested amounting 
to $18,428,270,000, reached the enormous 
total of $20,672,052,000, or almost two and a 
half times as much as the value of the farm 
products, on a capital less than one half that 
invested in farming. 

Until the introduction of the factory sys- 
tem in industry, agriculture was the calling 
followed by the vast majority of the peoples 
of the world. Wherever industry existed at 
all, it was conducted as an adjunct of, or in 
connection with agriculture. When agricul- 
ture required it, work was done on the farm; 
any spare time was devoted to the industry 
in which the family was proficient. With 
the advent in England of the inventions in 
spinning machinery driven by water-power, 
horse-power, or wind-power, toward the 
middle of the eighteenth century, and the 

1 Statistical Abstract of the United States, ign, Washing- 
ton, 1912, p. 160. 

2 Thirteenth Census of the United States, 19 10, Bulletin, 
" Manufactures," p. 3. 



Progress of Agriculture 119 

introduction of the power-loom in weaving a 
few years later, the private system of spin- 
ning and weaving in the home, whether by 
the wage-earner himself or by his wife or 
daughters, gave way to a new method, called 
the factory system, in which all the machin- 
ery and the workmen were placed under one 
roof. Every other industry in England soon 
followed in the wake of the textile industries, 
and the factory system became universal 
there, and was extended into Continental 
Europe and the United States. _ 

There was a demand for labor in the fac- 
tories, and people began to leave the farm to 
take employment with the newly established 
industrial enterprises. The scale of produc- 
tion in the factories was increased; and the 
time came when the age of steam was ushered 
in, and the progress of industry was still 
more rapid, and still more people were drawn 
away from the farm. When the use of 
steam-driven machinery became general, 
which occurred in the United States in 1850, 1 
so many new avenues of enterprise were 
opened that the energetic, the ambitious, and 

1 Twelfth Census of the United States, igoo, vol. vii., 
11 Manufactures," part i., Washington, 1902, p. 53. 



120 The New Agrarianism 

the restless began to leave the farm in flocks. 
Industry moved forward with giant strides; 
a superior class of men grew up in the indus- 
tries. Inventors were everywhere bringing 
forward new machines and discovering new 
processes of manufacture. New wealth was 
created, new towns sprang up, old towns 
grew rapidly in size and importance. Sur- 
prising tales were told on the farms, of the 
wealth and refinement and pleasure to be 
found in the towns. There was a fascination 
about the towns which enticed the best blood 
of the country away from the inactive civili- 
zation existing on the farm. 

This movement has been going on for 
nearly a century, advancing with lightning 
rapidity from decade to decade, and the 
progress still being made is wonderful to con- 
template. There are machines which do 
their work with almost human skill. New 
industries are constantly being introduced 
as the advancing civilization acquires new 
wants. Manufacturing has become more and 
more specialized, and in the last few years 
another important step was taken in indus- 
trial progress, when the nation-wide move- 
ment for greater efficiency, so extensively 



Progress of Agriculture 121 

heralded in the public prints, was introduced 
in manufacturing. A class of persons and 
firms and corporations has also appeared 
whose business it is to inaugurate methods 
for bringing about higher standards of effi- 
ciency in all lines of industry, transportation, 
and mercantile business. 

Practically all the foodstuffs consumed are 
the result of agriculture, yet what has been 
the relative state of agriculture during this 
era of industrial progress? As indicative of 
the condition of farming, even in recent 
years, it is of interest to note that until the 
invention of the cast-iron plough in 1797, 
the only plough in use was one made of 
wood, which Charles L. Flint 1 says was not 
unlike the ploughs used by the Romans 
before the Christian Era. Stationary as farm- 
ing appears to have been when compared 
with the progress made in industry, its 
improvement has engaged the attention of 
statesmen from the earliest period of the coun- 
try's history. In 1796, President George 
Washington, in his last annual address to 

1 "Agriculture in the United States," Charles L. Flint, 
Eighty Years' Progress of the United States, Hartford, 
Conn., 1867, pp. 30-31. 



122 The New Agrarianism 

Congress, spoke of the advisability of estab- 
lishing boards for " collecting and diffusing 
information," whereby the government 
would be "enabled by premiums and small 
pecuniary aids to encourage and assist a 
spirit of discovery and improvement." 

Agricultural societies were formed early 
in the history of the country, but that they 
were the result of the effort of President 
Washington does not appear. The cotton- 
gin, a machine for separating the fiber or 
lint from the cotton seed, was already used 
in the South near the close of the eight- 
eenth century. Seventy or eighty years ago 
the threshing machine superseded the flail, 
the reaping machine the cradle, the mowing 
machine the scythe ; also there were invented 
horse-rakes and horse-harrows. Agricultural 
machinery is constantly being improved, and 
new machines invented. In many schools 
and colleges the teaching of agriculture is 
now an exclusive or an integral part of the 
curriculum. Numerous agricultural journals 
and magazines are being published, as are 
many books treating on the same subject. 

In recent years improved conditions in 
farming life were many times agitated. 



Progress of Agriculture 123 

Forty years ago Horace Greeley, a great ed- 
itor but only an amateur farmer, wrote his 
famous book, What I Know of Farming, x in 
which he told, in the vigorous language for 
which he was noted, of the deficiencies of 
country life; explained how farming might 
be improved, and enlarged on the benefits 
of living on a farm. He kept many a man 
on the farm, and induced many another to 
turn his face away from the sordid city 
toward the green fields of the country. The 
people were grateful to Horace Greeley, and, 
in 1872, some of the wise men of the land 
selected him as their candidate for President, 
and not the least of their reasons for doing 
so was because of his affiliation with the 
country life. Less than fifteen years ago 
Prince Peter Kropotkin, a Russian noble, 
a nihilist and exile, residing in England, a 
writer of acknowledged ability, with only a 
scientific bent of mind to qualify him, 
gave to the world his Fields, Factories, 
and Workshops, 2 in which he outlined a 

1 What I Know of Farming, Horace Greeley, New York, 
1 87 1, pp. 1-32 1. 

2 Fields, Factories, and Workshops, P. Kropotkin, New 
York, 1901, pp. 1-220. 



124 The New Agrarianism 

new and ingenious scheme for improving 
agriculture. 

Considerable legislation has been enacted 
for the advancement of agriculture. In 
1862, in the midst of the Civil War, several 
important steps were taken by the national 
government in the interest of farming. Dur- 
ing that year an act was passed donating 
vast tracts of the public lands to the several 
States and territories, the proceeds of the 
sale of which were to be used for "the en- 
dowment, support, and maintenance " of 
colleges where the principal branches of 
learning were to be those relating to agri- 
culture and the mechanic arts. A second 
act was passed in 1890, giving $25,000 a year 
to such colleges, which act was amended 
in 1907 and the amount increased, so that 
now the sum of $50,000 is paid every year 
to each State and territory for the use 
of these colleges; and at least sixty-seven 
such institutions have been organized and 
are now in operation, in pursuance of these 
laws. The other law enacted in 1862, for the 
benefit of the farmers, was the one creating 
a Department of Agriculture, making it a 
bureau of the Interior Department, with a 



Progress of Agriculture 125 

commissioner, entomologist, and superintend- 
ent. In 1889, this bureau had so far increased 
in importance that it became an executive 
department, the head of which was called 
Secretary of Agriculture, with a seat in the 
President's Cabinet. The growth of this 
department in usefulness has been rapid, and 
under efficient management it has been light- 
ing the way for every one interested in the 
advance of agriculture. From the time that 
James Wilson became its head in 1897 t° 
19 12, the number of the employees increased 
from 2444 to 13,858, while the appropriations 
rose from $3,272,902 to almost $25,000,000. 
The requests addressed to the department 
increased during this time from 500 weekly 
to more than 52,000, the publications from 
424, aggregating 6,541,210 copies, to 21 10, 
aggregating 34,678,557 copies. 1 An incalcul- 
able amount of good has also been accom- 
plished by this department through almost 
seventy experimental stations conducted 
under its direction. 

In many of the older Eastern and Middle 
States, legislation has also been enacted, 

1 Report of the Secretary of Agriculture, IQI2, Washing- 
ton, 1912, pp. 114-116. 



126 The New Agrarianism 

largely since the perfection of the automobile, 
for the improvement of roads, and every 
year new roads have been opened and old 
ones improved, and the facilities of the 
farmers for getting their produce to market 
have been greatly improved. 

Other legislation of that substantial char- 
acter which alone is effective was enacted 
by which invaluable benefits were conferred 
upon agriculture. In 1 890, the Western farm- 
ers had become so radical, that the Farmers' 
Alliance, bursting the chrysalis of non-parti- 
sanship in which it had been enveloped, 
entered the political arena as the Populist 
party, and raging over the West like one 
of its old-time prairie fires, took the control 
of State after State away from the Republican 
party to which the farmers had until then 
been most loyal ; and the Farmers' Alliance 
began bending its energies toward the 
formation of a national organization. The 
West had always been rather dubious in 
regard to the benefits to be derived by it from 
a high protective tariff. For years, prior to 
this time, it had been struggling with the 
problem of introducing the culture of the 
sugar beet, and of engaging in the manufac- 



Progress of Agriculture 127 

ture of sugar from the same, which had been 
so successfully carried on in Europe, the in- 
troduction of which the Department of Agri- 
culture and writers on agricultural topics had 
been urging for years. Numerous feeble 
attempts had ended in failure. In 1880, 
according to the census report for 1900, z 
there were, in the United States, four beet- 
sugar factories, with a capitalization of 
$365,000, and an annual production valued 
at $282,572. In 1890 the number of factories 
had dwindled to two, and the production 
of beet sugar was so insignificant that the 
census reports give scarcely any details of 
the industry as it existed at that time. The 
Republican party was in control of both 
houses of Congress, and was in the midst of 
the preparation of a new tariff bill. If it 
could win back the prodigals by so framing 
the tariff bill as to assist the struggling beet- 
sugar industry by some such device as that 
employed in Germany, Austria-Hungary, 
France, Russia, Belgium, Italy, and Sweden, 
where the beet-sugar industry was being 
stimulated by the payment of bounties on all 

1 Twelfth Census of the United States, "Manufactures," 
part iii., Washington, 1908, p. 445. 



128 The New Agrarianism 

sugar exported, it would give the Western 
farmers an object-lesson in the value of pro- 
tection, and make them permanent converts 
to the protective system. Instead of placing 
a duty on the sugar imported, as hitherto had 
been the custom, a law was enacted which 
provided for the payment of a bounty of two 
cents a pound on all sugar produced. 1 The 
growth of sugar beets in the West, as well as 
the growth of sugar cane in Louisiana, was 
greatly stimulated. Men with capital and 
of tried business experience went into the 
manufacture of beet sugar, in many cases 
bringing experts from abroad to plan and 
operate the factories which they established. 
Contracts for long periods were entered into 
with the farmers for growing beets, by which 
large tracts of land were brought into profit- 
able cultivation, and the farmers given an 
annual fixed revenue. Men who had hesi- 
tated about going into the business of manu- 
facturing beet sugar now spent their money 
lavishly in constructing and equipping fac- 

1 American Tariff Controversies in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury, Edward Stanwood, vol. ii. f Boston, 1903, pp. 243- 
295; The Tariff History of the United States, F. W. 
Taussig, fifth edition, 1909, New York, pp. 251-283. 



Progress of Agriculture 129 

tories. The government bounty enabled 
them to pass the experimental stage in safety 
and place the industry on a successful com- 
mercial basis. The law was only on the 
statute books until August 24, 1894, a ^ which 
time the Democratic party had come into 
power, and repealed the law by the enact- 
ment of another in its place. Although the 
Democratic party was traditionally for free 
trade, through the intervention of the repre- 
sentatives in Congress from Louisiana, the 
great sugar-cane-growing State, the new law 
was so framed as to again place a duty on 
the sugar imported. During the four years 
that the law of 1890 was in force, the sum of 
$28,818,148 was paid out in bounties, a fair 
share of which was paid to the beet-sugar 
manufacturers. 

The results obtained in the beet-sugar 
industry, by the operation of the tariff law of 
1890, also had a strong local bearing in the 
States where the culture of sugar beets had 
been introduced. After the national govern- 
ment discontinued the payment of bounties 
on sugar, some of the Western and North 
Central States, realizing the benefits already 
derived from the payment of bounties on 



130 The New Agrarianism 

beet sugar, took up the question, and also 
paid bounties, some on the sugar beets grown 
within their borders, others on the beet 
sugar manufactured. Minnesota, by the acts 
of its General Assembly passed in 1895 and 
1899, provided a bounty of one cent a pound 
on all beet sugar manufactured in that State. 
Both acts were declared unconstitutional, on 
the ground that the purpose of the payment 
of the bounties was not a public one. s In 
1897, Michigan enacted a law similar to the 
Minnesota laws. This law was also held to 
be unconstitutional. 2 Idaho enacted a law for 
the payment of a cent a pound on all sugar 
manufactured, for the first year of the estab- 
lishment of the beet-sugar manufactory. In 
Kansas the law provides for the payment of 
one dollar a ton on all sugar beets grown in 
that State. 

At the present time, nothing can disturb 
the beet-sugar industry, unless it would be 
adverse tariff legislation, it being as firmly 
established as is the manufacture of iron and 
steel, glass, and a hundred other staple arti- 

1 Minnesota Sugar Co. vs. Iverson, 91 Minn., 30. 

2 Sugar Company vs. Auditor General, 124 Mich., 
674. 



Progress of Agriculture 131 

cles. The census report for 1910 1 shows 
that in 1899, the first year after the enact- 
ment of the tariff law of 1890 for which 
statistics of the beet-sugar industry are 
available, there were thirty beet-sugar fac- 
tories in operation in the United States, 
with a capitalization of $20,142,000, and 
that there were planted 135,305 acres of 
sugar beets, producing sugar of the value of 
$7,323,875; in 1904, fifty-one factories, with 
a capitalization of $55,923,000, and that 
there were planted 240,787 acres, producing 
sugar of the value of $24,393,794; in 1909, 
fifty-eight factories, with a capitalization of 
$120,629,000, and that there were planted 
415,964 acres, producing sugar of the value of 
$48,122,383. In 1912, the beet-sugar factories 
had increased to sixty-six, and the acreage 
devoted to the culture of sugar beets to 
473>877 acres. 2 In 1909, the beet sugar 
produced in the United States was 60.6 per 
cent, of the total production of sugar, as 
against 39.4 per cent, manufactured from 

1 Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910, Bulletin, 
"Manufactures," pp. 38-39, 74. 

2 Report of the Secretary of Agriculture, 191 2, Washing- 
ton, 1912, p. 135. 



132 The New Agrarianism 

cane of domestic growth. The census report 
for 1 9 10 also discloses the fact that the 
farmers received for the beets grown by 
them in 1909 the large sum of $20,857,000. 
The tariff law of 1890 did more for the 
farmers than to establish the beet-sugar 
industry. It brought them into daily con- 
tact with men of affairs, who were employing 
the best business methods, a fact which 
could not help but have a pronounced 
influence in deciding the farmers to employ 
like methods in the conduct of their farms. 
Generally speaking, the farmers of the 
United States are apathetic, and lack the 
power of initiative, or at least are timid about 
exercising it. They are too indifferent to 
assert themselves and to rise in their might 
and show what sleeping lions they are. 
When spurred on by dire necessity, they 
have occasionally adopted modern business 
methods, which serve as illustrations of what 
can be accomplished by intelligent effort. 
The work done by the tobacco-growers of 
Kentucky and Tennessee in this respect, 
since 1904, deserves more than passing notice. 
The basis of the movement was cooperation ; 
and a business man of experience, who was 



Progress of Agriculture 133 

interested in tobacco-growing, was the father 
of the organization. It was a union of the 
growers of the Black Patch tobacco, and was 
in the form of a corporation, in which the 
growers held the stock, and was called the 
Planters' Protective Association of Virginia, 
Kentucky, and Tennessee. Under this plan, 
the farmer delivers his tobacco to the asso- 
ciation, which presses it into hogsheads for 
delivery to authorized warehouses. It is 
graded, prices are fixed, and the tobacco is 
sold by the association. The Planters* Pro- 
tective Association has not only exerted an 
educative influence on its members, by teach- 
ing them how to improve their tobacco, but 
it has assisted them in obtaining a much 
higher price than formerly. In 1907, the 
growers of the Burley tobacco also formed 
an association called the Burley Society; and 
together the two organizations control the 
output of the tobacco fields of Kentucky and 
Tennessee. That, to some extent, both asso- 
ciations, fell into disrepute, by reason of the 
acts of violence and murder which were 
committed in 1908, in certain parts of Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee, by roving bands of 
11 night riders," is not a fault of the plan, 



134 The New Agrarianism 

but is due rather to the character of the 
people and the lax administration of the 
laws. z To attribute the lawlessness to defects 
in the scheme of organization would be as 
unreasonable as to condemn all labor unions 
simply because the International Union of 
Bridge and Structural Iron Workers executed 
a dynamite campaign against employers of 
non-union labor, in the course of which it 
destroyed much valuable property and sacri- 
ficed at least twenty-one human lives. 

On the Pacific Coast and in the Western 
States, they have organizations which re- 
semble the Planters' Protective Association 
and the Burley Society. These also are 
generally incorporated, and are organized 
to handle the apple production in the States 
of Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Kan- 
sas. Like their Southern prototypes, they 
partake of the attributes of a selling agency 
for the crops of all of their members, and like 
those organizations have rules for handling, 
sorting, wrapping, packing, and shipping the 
fruit, which the members are required to 

x "The Tobacco Pools of Kentucky and Tennessee/* 
Anna Youngman, Journal of Political Economy, Chicago, 
January, 19 10, pp. 34"49- 



Progress of Agriculture 135 

observe. They also sometimes employ men 
with expert knowledge to teach the members 
the best and most scientific manner of raising 
the fruit. 

California is preeminent as a grower of 
deciduous fruits, such as peaches, pears, 
plums, prunes, table grapes, and cherries. 
It is an industry of great moment, and, 
by reason of its magnitude, the growers 
have had greater experience in cooperative 
handling than the growers of any other 
fruits in the country. The most successful 
organizations are the California Fruit Dis- 
tributors, a league of shippers and growers, 
and the California Fresh Fruit Exchange, 
the latter being enrolled as a member of 
the former, the two controlling a majority 
of the deciduous fruits grown in the State. 
Much of the success of the California Fresh 
Fruit Exchange is due to the fact that 
from the first it advanced money upon crop 
mortgages. In this and other particulars, its 
managers have shown an appreciation of the 
fact that, to survive in a competitive busi- 
ness, a cooperative organization needs all 
the elasticity of a private concern. x 

1 " Cooperative Marketing of California Fresh Fruit," 



136 The New Agrarianism 

The California Fruit Growers Exchange 
is an organization for handling the citrous 
fruits of California, which are mainly oranges 
and lemons, and represents about 6000 grow- 
ers, who have organized themselves into a 
hundred or more local associations on a 
non-profit basis. It is the most powerful 
and successful organization to be found in 
any agricultural industry in the United 
States, if not in the world, acting as agent 
in distributing $15,000,000 worth of fruit 
each year. In Florida the citrous-fruit 
growers, and in western New York the 
grape-growers, have their organizations, as 
have the Georgia peach-shippers. 1 There 
have been other cooperative associations 
among the farmers, but they were mainly 
ephemeral in character, and never attained 
the success of those previously enumerated. 

Fred Wilbur Powell, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 
Cambridge, Mass., February, 1910, pp. 392-418. 

1 " Cooperation in the Handling and Marketing of 
Fruit," G. Harold Powell, Yearbook of the United States 
Department of Agriculture, iqio, Washington, 191 1, pp. 
391-406. 



CHAPTER VII 

MODERN AGRICULTURE IN ENGLAND, 
GERMANY, AND DENMARK 

THE alarming rise in the cost of foodstuffs 
in recent years has set in motion, in 
the United States, a nation-wide movement, 
having for its object the regeneration of 
farming; the aim on the one hand being to 
make agriculture more profitable, and, on 
the other hand, to bring about a reduction 
in the price of the articles produced on the 
farm. The latter purpose, according to gen- 
eral opinion, can be effected only by an 
increase in the amount of foodstuffs pro- 
duced. With this object in view, hundreds 
of individuals, lawyers, clergymen, scientists, 
teachers, bankers, business men, and farmers, 
as well as corporations, have undertaken the 
task of bringing about the improvement of 
agriculture. The newspapers and magazines 
teem with articles on the subject. The 
i37 



138 The New Agrarianism 

Pennsylvania Railroad Company, in the 
eastern part of the United States, operates 
demonstration trains supplied with teachers 
from the agricultural colleges, employed to 
instruct the farmers in improved methods 
of farming. Pamphlets on every branch of 
agriculture are supplied free of cost; a new 
agricultural literature is being created. In 
some of the Southern and Western States 
the railroads are doing a similar work. 

In times past, this country borrowed many 
ideas from Europe and improved upon them. 
Such was the case in the textile industries, 
it was true in iron- and steel-making, in 
glass-making, in coal-mining. The same 
results could be accomplished in agricul- 
ture if America would again turn to Eu- 
rope and study that continent's agricultural 
methods. 

The condition to which Mr. Hill referred, 
when he told the people of the United States 
that they were menaced by the danger of 
being, at some future time, unable to raise 
sufficient foodstuffs for their own use, has 
for years been an actuality in several of the 
principal countries of Europe. The two 
leading manufacturing nations in Europe, 



Modern Agriculture in England 139 

England and Germany, have long since 
passed the stage of being producers of all 
the foodstuffs which they consume, to that 
of food importers. The statesmen of both 
countries became cognizant many years ago 
of the direction in which their countries 
were drifting, and took steps to improve 
farming, in order that what was deemed 
inevitable would not come to pass, or, at 
least, would be postponed. At the outbreak 
of the French Revolution, England was pro- 
ducing barely sufficient foodstuffs to support 
her people. When she became embroiled in 
the Napoleonic wars, and the markets of 
Continental Europe from which she might 
have drawn a part of her supplies were 
closed to her by Napoleon, she suddenly re- 
alized that she did not grow enough food- 
stuffs to feed her people. She set about 
devising improved methods of agriculture, 
by the aid of which it was expected to 
greatly increase her production of food- 
stuffs. Until this time, farming had been 
carried on largely by the antiquated and 
wasteful open-field system, under which the 
fields were subdivided into unfenced strips 
of about an acre, those belonging to one 



140 The New Agrarianism 

family often being scattered over a con- 
siderable area. This system was changed 
into that of inclosure, by which each man's 
holdings were placed together in one tract 
and inclosed by a fence. In 1801, the Gen- 
eral Inclosure Act was passed which made 
it much less burdensome and expensive 
than the inclosures effected under the older 
methods by special acts of Parliament. 
Under the act of 1801 alone, 119 acts for 
the inclosure of land were passed, and an 
area of probably 300,000 acres inclosed. 
From 1 801 to 18 10, 906 inclosure acts were 
passed. The movement resulted also in great 
tracts of moor and fen land being reduced to 
severalty ownership and cultivated. The 
crops were greatly increased. 

The second attempt to improve agriculture 
was by the enactment in 181 5 of the famous 
Corn Laws, occasioned by the return of 
peace, which brought about a sudden drop 
in the prices of foodstuffs and a consequent 
great distress among the farmers. These 
laws prohibited the importation of corn 
until the price had reached eighty shillings 
per quarter. The laws remained in force 
until 1846, when the manufacturing interests, 



Modern Agriculture in England 141 

having become sufficiently powerful, com- 
pelled their repeal. 

In later years, England enacted further 
agricultural legislation. The Agricultural 
Rates Law, passed "in order to place agri- 
cultural lands in their right position as 
compared with other ratable properties," 
became a law in 1896, and although only 
applicable for a limited period of years, 
relieved agricultural lands of half the local 
rates, and provided for making good the 
deficiency in the local taxation caused 
thereby, out of the Imperial funds. 

In 1908, the English Parliament also enacted 
the consolidating act for the creation of 
small holdings and allotments, the object 
of which was to assist the laboring classes 
in acquiring small holdings of land. Under 
this act the county councils were authorized 
to acquire land, through compulsion if neces- 
sary, to be relet by them to suitable tenants 
in small holdings and allotments, a small 
holding being from one to fifty acres, and 
an allotment not to exceed five acres. The 
tenants have the privilege of purchasing on 
easy terms. The parish or other local coun- 
cil also has the power to supply allotments 



142 The New Agrarianism 

up to five acres. 1 So anxious were the 
people to obtain the benefit of this law 
that by December, 1910, there were nearly 
31,000 applicants for small holdings, re- 
quiring 500,000 acres of land. As but one 
fifth of that amount of acreage had been 
acquired, there was land sufficient for only 
about 7000 holdings. At this time 28,000 
acres had been purchased or leased and 
sublet in allotments to more than 100,000 
tenants. 2 

Germany remained an agricultural nation 
many years longer than England. In 
Germany, agriculture and literature and 
philosophy always seemed to go hand in 
hand, and part of Germany farmed, and the 
rest wrote books on philosophy, or indited 
poetry or romances, or reveled in art or 
music, and dreamed of Germany's future 
greatness. In 1870 and 1871, Germany 
fought a bloody war with France, her ancient 
enemy who had humbled her into the 

1 "Small Holdings and Agricultural Cooperation in 
England," C. R. Fay, The Quarterly Journal of Economics \ 
Cambridge, Mass., May, 1910, pp. 499-514. 

2 "The Land of Fulfillment," Samuel P. Orth, World's 
Work, New York, July, 19 12, pp. 337-352. 



Modern Agriculture in Germany 143 

dust seventy years before, and was successful. 
She left off dreaming, and organized a re- 
presentative government; her national life 
changed, and the conquerors of France 
became the conquerors of industry. In 
1880 she had ceased to be an agricultural 
nation; she no longer had a surplus popula- 
tion to send, by hundreds of thousands annu- 
ally, as emigrants across the seas, to make 
new homes for themselves in foreign lands. 
Her emigration fell to less than twenty-five 
thousand a year; and even this number is 
more than offset by the immigrants who come 
to her annually. She needs all her people at 
home. 

The success of Germany in industry, how- 
ever, also brought about a new condition 
under which she could no longer produce 
foodstuffs sufficient to feed her people. The 
economic character of the country changed, 
and she was transformed into a manufactur- 
ing nation. She now imports annually many 
million dollars' worth of foodstuffs, receiv- 
ing from the United States alone, in 1908, 
the banner year so far as imports of wheat 
from this country into Germany were con- 
cerned, wheat to the value of $12,713,649 



144 The New Agrarianism 

and flour to the value of $3,021,658. Ger- 
many saw the wisdom of enacting laws for 
the improvement of her agriculture. She 
now believed in a protective tariff and, from 
1879 on, levied a tariff on articles of agri- 
culture. On wheat and rye imported, a duty 
of one mark per 100 kilograms (about 3^ 
bushels) was levied. This duty was increased 
from time to time until it had been raised to 
5 marks per 100 kilograms on rye, and 5.50 
marks on wheat. The duty on live stock 
and meats was also largely increased over 
what it had been originally fixed in 1879. J 

The agriculture of Germany has continued 
to prosper, notwithstanding that the immense 
development of industry reduced the per- 
centage of the population living in the 
country and small towns, from 76.3 per cent, 
in 1 871 to 57.74 per cent, in 1900, while the 
population living in the cities and large 
towns rose from 23.7 per cent, in 1871 to 
42.26 per cent, in 1900. Since 1900, the 
movement from the country to the city has 
shown a still greater percentage of increase 

1 Die Entwicklung der wirtschaftspolitischen Ideen im 
iq. Jahrhundert, Eugen von Philippovich, Tubingen, 
1910, p. 106. 



Modern Agriculture in Germany 145 

in favor of the city. The land under cultiva- 
tion in 1900, exclusive of that used for forests 
and plantations, notwithstanding the move- 
ment to the cities and towns, was 64.6 per 
cent., as against 62.7 per cent, in 1883, when 
the exodus first became marked. 

The movement for the encouragement of 
persons desirous of acquiring small holdings 
of land began in Germany long before this 
occurred in England. In Prussia, under the 
laws of 1890 and 1891, the State may pur- 
chase land for division into small peasant 
properties, which are transferred to small 
proprietors on the payment of an annual 
rent-charge fixed in money, or in wheat 
payable in money. Part of the rent-charge 
is irredeemable, the redeemable portion being 
received in payments spread over 56^ years. 
The properties cannot be subdivided or en- 
cumbered, and, to prevent speculation, they 
cannot be sold without the consent of the 
government. The State also makes loans to 
the owners for the building of houses. 

0. Eltzbacher in his Modern Germany, 1 
although the book is written from an English 

1 Modern Germany, O. Eltzbacher, London, 1905, pp. 
1-337- 
10 



146 The New Agrarianism 

point of view, and with an Englishman's 
bias, gives a painstaking and well-balanced 
account of the recent history and present 
condition of agriculture in Germany. To 
the studious habits, and the adaptability of 
the Germans to new ideas, and to their 
proverbial thoroughness, German agriculture 
owes its present healthy condition. England 
had long been in the lead in agriculture, and 
it was the description of English modes of 
farming, and of English agricultural imple- 
ments, printed in Germany, that pointed the 
way for the improvement of German farm- 
ing. Experimental stations on the English 
model were established. Now there are not 
less than seventy such stations in Germany, 
while England has still only two. Germany 
also struck out on an original line. In 1840, 
her great chemist, Justus von Liebig, pub- 
lished his celebrated work, Organic Chemistry 
Applied to Agriculture and Physiology, and 
agriculture entered on a new phase. From 
that time forward its rise was rapid, the re- 
sult of the education of the people in agricul- 
ture. For this purpose she established many 
educational establishments where farming 
is taught. England, the mother of modern 



Modern Agriculture in Germany 147 

agriculture, has, all told, seventeen institu- 
tions devoted in whole or in part to giving 
instruction in agriculture. Germany pre- 
sents a far different aspect, according to Mr. 
Eltzbacher: 

In Prussia alone there are nine agricultural 
high schools, where about 2500 pupils are trained 
by 202 teachers. According to the latest re- 
turn, these high schools were attended by 1852 
German students and by no less than 569 for- 
eigners. The State aids these high schools with 
grants of £40,860 per annum. Besides these 
high schools, there are 202 ambulant lecturers 
provided by the State, who teach scientific agri- 
culture. Furthermore there are in Germany 
269 other agricultural schools with 1803 teachers 
and 15,811 pupils, and facilities are provided in 
every direction for spreading the scientific 
knowledge of agriculture far and wide. Many 
teachers in rural elementary schools voluntarily 
study agriculture in the high schools in order to 
be able to teach some useful and valuable things 
to the country children and their parents. The 
Prussian Ministry of Agriculture spends yearly 
about £200,000 on agricultural education in all 
its branches, and the sum total spent by all the 
German governments and local authorities in 
this direction must be about £500,000. 



148 The New Agrarianism 

The land under cultivation for the leading 
staple crops in England for the last forty 
years has been constantly diminishing. The 
area devoted to the cultivation of wheat, 
barley, oats, rye, beans, and peas, which in 
1875 was 11,399,030 acres, had, in 1905, 
fallen to 8,333,770 acres, or 27 per cent. The 
area devoted to garden crops, such as pota- 
toes, turnips and swedes, mangel, cabbage, 
kohl-rabi, rape, vetches, tares, and other 
green crops, fell from 5,057,029 acres in 1875 
to 4,144,374 acres in 1905. In Germany, 
notwithstanding her evolution, during this 
period, from an agricultural to a manufactur- 
ing state, the area under cultivation for corn 
and green crops rose from 22,424,570 hec- 
tares (a hectare is 2.471 acres) in 1883 to 
23,488,780 hectares in 1900; and the land 
used for garden crops from 415,950 hectares 
to 482,790 hectares. Grass-lands decreased 
during this period from 3,336,830 hectares 
to 2,285,740 hectares, the decrease in area 
being about the same as that taken up by the 
increased amount of land used for cereals and 
garden crops. The population of the agricul- 
tural districts declined only slightly, and 
when compared with Great Britain, insig- 



Modern Agriculture in Germany 149 

nificantly. The rural laboring population of 
Germany has likewise declined but little. At 
the census of 1882, there were, male and 
female, 5,763,970 farm laborers, while at the 
census of 1895, there were 5,445,924, being 
a decrease of 318,046. This was but 5}^ 
per cent., while the decrease in the farm 
laborers of Great Britain during the same 
period was 30 per cent. The loss in German 
farm laborers is altogether made up by the 
annual influx from Austria- Hungary and Rus- 
sia of from 200,000 to 400,000 farm laborers 
who are attracted by the higher wages paid in 
Germany. Live stock has increased in Ger- 
many: horses from 3,352,231 in 1873 to 
4,184,099 in 1900; cattle from 15,776,702 
in 1873 to 19,001,106 in 1900; pigs from 
7,124,088 in 1873 to 16,758,436 in 1900. 
The number of sheep has declined, owing 
to the shrinkage of the pasture lands, from 
24,999, 406 in 1873 to 9,672,143 in 1900. 

Scientific methods of procedure, which 
have done so much for German manufactures, 
attracted the admiration of that eminent 
inventor, Thomas A. Edison, during a recent 
visit to Germany. On his return, in an 
interview intended to incite his fellow-coun- 



150 The New Agrarianism 



trymen to adopt better methods in industry, x 
he declared that American factories have a 

" champagne atmosphere" ; that in this country 
we shout "Hurrah, boys! Whoop her up!" 
that comparatively speaking we do things in a 
rough and tumble way ; while in Germany they 
follow out their problems in long and patient 
scientific research; that they are tireless in 
getting from their factories every product pos- 
sible, and in producing goods as nearly perfect 
as they can make them. 

The same thoroughness that Mr. Edison 
discovered in manufacturing is employed in 
agriculture. Not only has the land under 
cultivation been extended, but the quantity 
of crops raised on a given area has been 
greatly increased in recent years. Mr. Eltz- 
bacher prints the following comparative 
table, which gives the yield of six staple 
crops per hectare, in kilograms: 





Wheat 


Rye 


Barley 


Oats 


Potatoes 


Hay 


1893 

1898 
1903 


1,670 
1,840 
1,970 


1,490 
1,520 
1,650 


1,480 
1.730 
1.950 


1,070 
1,690 
1,840 


13.410 
11,920 
13.250 


2,230 
4.380 
4.450 



x "What Edison Saw in German Plants," Edward 
Mott Wooley, Factory, Chicago, May, 1912, pp. 351-352, 
380-381. 



Modern Agriculture in Germany 151 



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152 The New Agrarianism 

Although the quality of the soil of Ger- 
many is much poorer than that of England, 
and the climate less favorable for agriculture, 
if the same rate of improvement is continued, 
Germany will soon equal or surpass England. 
The knowledge which her people possess of 
chemistry has enabled them to use the crops 
produced to the best commercial advantage 
and to devise new and greatly improved 
processes for the utilization of every particle. 
The improvement in the method of produc- 
ing sugar out of the sugar beet is a notable 
instance of what has been accomplished in 
this direction, and the results are almost 
marvelous, as is apparent from the table 
taken from Mr. Eltzbacher's book: 





Percentage of Raw 


Production of 




Sugar Extracted 


Sugar in 




from Beet 


Germany 


1875-6 


8.60 


358,048 tons 


1880-1 


9.04 


573.030 " 


1885-6 


n.85 


838,105 " 


I 890- I 


12.54 


1,336,221 " 


1895-6 


14.02 


1.637,057 " 


1900- I 


18.86 


1,970,000 " 



In passing the Small Holdings and Allot- 
ments Act of 1908, and the earlier acts of the 



Modern Agriculture in Denmark 153 

same character which are on her statute 
books, England was putting into practice 
lessons learned from Denmark, the model 
small-farm country of Europe. In Denmark, 
education has not only made the people 
excellent farmers, but it has taught them 
how best to use their produce and to buy 
their supplies. 1 They have their cooperative 
dairies, cooperative bacon factories, cooper- 
ative egg export societies, and cooperative 
societies for purchasing supplies for the 
farm. In 1899 and in 1904, the government 
stimulated the small-farm movement, which 
had been assisted for more than half a cen- 
tury by the credit associations in existence 
in Denmark, by enacting laws which en- 
abled the peasants to borrow money from 
the government with which to buy land. 
The value of each purchase is limited to 
$1600, and the size of the estate so pur- 
chased ranges from eight to twelve acres. 
The purchasers are required to furnish only 

T "A Commonwealth Ruled by Farmers," Frederick 
C. Howe, The Outlook, New York, February 26, 1910, pp. 
441-450; ''Danish Life in Town and Country," Jessie 
Brochner, New York, 1907, pp. 221-235; "Social Den- 
mark," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Cambridge, 
Mass., November, 1912, pp. 50-55. 



154 The New Agrarianism 

one tenth of the purchase money, the govern- 
ment supplying the other nine tenths, charg- 
ing four per cent, annually, three per cent, 
being interest on the purchase price, and 
the other one per cent, for the payment of 
the loan. The only disadvantage of these 
laws, like the disadvantage of the English 
Small Holdings and Allotments acts, and 
the Prussian land purchase laws, has been 
that they have had the effect of increasing 
the price of all land in the districts where 
purchases are contemplated, the consequence 
being that the purchasers are required to 
pay higher prices than the land would 
otherwise sell for. 



CHAPTER VIII 

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT 
OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE 

IN both England and Germany, agriculture 
has reached a higher state of develop- 
ment than in the United States. In England, 
32.2 bushels of wheat are raised to the acre 
and in Germany 28 bushels, while in the 
United States only 14. 1 bushels are grown. 
In England and Germany, also, a much 
larger percentage of the total area is under 
cultivation than in the United States. Eng- 
land and Wales have an area of 37,327,479 
acres, of which the average area under culti- 
vation is about 76 per cent. Germany has an 
area of 133,619,206 acres, of which 64.6 per 
cent, is under cultivation, not including the 
cultivated land classed as forest and planta- 
tion, which amounts to about 26 per cent, 
more. In the United States, out of a total 
155 



156 The New Agrarianism 

area of 1,903,289,600 acres, only 878,798,325 
acres are in farms, of which 478,451,750 
acres, or 25.1 per cent, of the whole area, 
are improved. This country can do as well 
as England, both in the volume of crops 
raised to the acre, and in the percentage of 
the total area of land placed under cultiva- 
tion. If, however, it should only equal Ger- 
many, and, taking wheat for example, raise 
28 bushels to the acre, and cultivate 64.6 
per cent, of the total area, it would increase 
its wheat crop about five and three-fourth 
times over what it was in 191 1, or in- 
stead of being 621,338,000 bushels, it would 
reach the enormous total of 3,542,470,000 
bushels. 

How to bring about such a condition is the 
problem which confronts the statesmen of 
to-day, for this is their task, rather than a 
task for the farmers themselves. The ques- 
tions involved present such grave difficulties 
that their solution is possible only after they 
have been carefully studied by experts, 
digested and matured, and put to a practical 
test. 

Perhaps a good way to begin a movement 
for the advancement of agriculture would 



American Agriculture 157 

be to effect a transfer of the cultivators of 
the soil to the ranks of those whose plan of 
life contemplates a transition to a higher 
plane than the one on which they were born. 
Also sufficient inducements, material and 
social, must be provided, in order that the 
energy, the education, and the brawn of the 
land may, by turning to the country for a 
career or for employment, reinforce the ele- 
ment that is to the manner born. When 
the tide has turned, and the advantages of 
life on a farm become apparent, the social 
status of the farmers will rise; and the 
bright minds of the nation will flock into 
the country, and bend their energies for the 
further progress of agriculture. Marvelous 
consequences may be expected when the 
old farmers and the new farmers are unitedly 
engaged in the elevation of agriculture. 
While Germany was yet an agricultural state, 
and industry was of minor importance, the 
business men of that country were regarded 
in a cynical, half -contemptuous manner. Like 
the American farmers of to-day, they were 
lampooned on the stage, in prose and in 
poetry. Contrasting that period with the 
present day, Hugo Munsterberg, in an article 



158 The New Agrarianism 

published in The North American Review, 1 
wrote : 

The strongest, best elements of the social 
organization, the intelligent boys of well-to-do 
families became officers and lawyers, scholars 
and physicians, government employees and 
land-owners, but they looked down on the call- 
ing of the business man and on all technical 
activities. To-day in exactly these social groups 
the callings of the lawyer and of the officer have 
somewhat lost in attractiveness, and the life- 
work of the banker, of the business man, and of 
the manufacturer, and above all the technical 
professions have risen rapidly in the general 
estimation. It is clear that this involves a circle ; 
the prosperity of the land draws the best ele- 
ments into wealth-producing activities, and it 
is just this support by the best and strongest 
minds which works most directly toward the 
increase of Germany's prosperity. 

It is fortunate for the United States that 
it has before it the experience of the other 
countries where agriculture has moved for- 
ward; and it is an old bromidiom, to borrow 

1 "The Germany of To-Day, " Hugo Munsterberg, 
The North American Review, New York, February, 1912, 
pp. 182-200. 



American Agriculture 159 

the word coined by a modern American 
humorist to denote expressions which have 
become banal by excessive use, that "expe- 
rience is the best teacher," which, if true at 
all, is true of farming. Yet it must be borne 
in mind that conditions in the United States 
are in many respects widely different from 
those prevailing in Europe, and therefore 
much work must be done here on original 
lines. The adoption of original methods, 
whether in public or private affairs, has 
also often led to epoch-making results. Gus- 
tavus Adolphus, the " Snow King" of the 
Thirty Years' War, by introducing into his 
army a new system of tactics, was enabled 
to defeat Austria, with enormously greater 
population and resources; Andrew Carnegie, 
by taking early advantage of the new pro- 
cesses of steel-making invented by Bessemer 
and Siemens, became the greatest steel 
manufacturer of the world. 

There are two forces which seem to be 
the agencies which have promoted all pro- 
gress, of whatever nature and wherever 
made, Education and Money. The most 
illuminating example of the truth of this 
statement is to be seen in the story of 



160 The New Agrarianism 

the advancement of Japan in less than half a 
century. Forty-five years ago that country 
was so unenlightened that its soldiers still 
fought with bows and arrows, and wore 
padded armor. Count Okuma, formerly 
Prime Minister of Japan, and one of the 
founders of the new Japan, writing of his 
country's renaissance, has this explanation 
to make of the cause of its tremendous 
success during this period 1 : 

One of the principal measures adopted by the 
Restoration government, with the object of 
promoting the national prosperity and enlight- 
enment, was the education — using the term in 
its widest sense — of the young as well as of 
grown men, some of whom held high govern- 
ment positions. These latter were made to 
travel through civilized countries for the pur- 
pose of observing and examining their social, 
industrial, and political institutions, with a view 
to transplanting to Japanese soil whatever 
seemed to them likely to bear good fruit there. 
A great many students were also sent abroad to 
study all the branches of modern science. At 
home, not only were common schools established 

1 "The Industrial Revolution in Japan, " Count Okuma, 
The North American Review, November, 1900, pp. 676-691. 



American Agriculture 161 

all over the country, but there arose the Im- 
perial University, the Schools of Mechanical 
Engineering and of Agriculture. - The young 
men began thus to be equipped for their future 
activity in the spheres of politics and industry. 

The Japanese statesmen had solved the 
problem of their country's rise when they 
determined upon the education of their 
people. The education of the American 
farmers in the art of proper farming will 
advance their calling in the same degree 
that the education of the Japanese advanced 
Japan, but their primary lessons must be 
in good business methods. The education 
of the farmers should be so conducted that 
they will be of business capacity equal to 
that of the men who manage the mills, 
the factories, the mines, and the railroads. 
Eugen von Philippovich, one of Germany's 
leading political economists, in writing of 
the work accomplished in Germany by the 
Agrarians of that country, 1 expressed the 
view that successful farming conditions can 
only be brought about "by the develop- 

1 Die Entwicklung der wirtschaftspolitischen Ideen im 
iq. Jahrhundert, Eugen von Philippovich, Tubingen, 
1910, pp. 114-115. 



1 62 The New Agrarianism 

ment among the farmers of a strong per- 
sonality, together with organizing talents 
and business capacity." The acquisition of 
such qualities has produced the kings of 
business; but they are attributes which are 
difficult to teach. No matter how excellent 
the textbook in use, the practical applica- 
tion of its lessons may present insuperable ob- 
stacles to the student ; and successful business 
men do not teach others the lessons which 
they learned in the school of experience. 

The United States Government should 
undertake the proper education of the 
farmers. The present Department of Agri- 
culture should be made more efficient, by 
giving it largely increased appropriations to 
be expended for the benefit of agriculture, 
according to a course of procedure to be 
mapped out by experts secured wherever 
possible. When woolen, cotton, iron, steel, 
and glass manufacturing were introduced in- 
to the United States, the original workmen 
employed in these industries were brought 
from England and Germany and France. 
Sir Horace Plunkett, when about to start 
the machinery of the Irish Department of 
Agriculture and Technical Instruction, was 



American Agriculture 163 

unable to secure any expert agricultural 
instructors in Ireland, and found it necessary 
to procure such persons in Scotland and 
England. Experts, when secured, should be 
sent all over the world if need be, in order 
to study and report on every improvement 
or innovation which might in any way 
affect agriculture. Every farmer who is at 
all familiar with the work done by the 
United States Department of Agriculture 
knows that the results already accomplished 
by that department are of incalculable value 
to the farmers. Chemistry can accomplish 
much. It is only three or four decades 
since chemistry began to be employed in 
industrial establishments in the United 
States, yet in that brief time it has done 
wonders. The government experimental 
stations should be largely increased both 
in numbers and efficiency. Experiment 
would discover the crops best adapted to 
particular soils. Experiment would also 
often demonstrate that soil formerly deemed 
worthless, either on account of climatic con- 
ditions such as high altitude or by reason 
of its composition, might be made to produce 
crops. It is a well-known scientific fact 



1 64 The New Agrarianism 

that an evolution has been going on in 
plant, as in animal life, and that many- 
plants have been improved by modern 
methods of cultivation. Science has also 
shown that wild plants once deemed worth- 
less can be utilized. Dr. J. H. Webber of 
Cornell University, 1 tells how that univer- 
sity experimented with different varieties of 
timothy, and as a result discovered that 
certain varieties produced practically double 
the quantity per acre over the varieties in 
ordinary use. Experiments of this charac- 
ter present a limitless field for the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture. 

The Department of Agriculture should also 
investigate that most important of all ques- 
tions to the farmers, namely, agricultural 
labor. A laboring population should be 
gathered into the country. The mills and 
factories of New England, and the industrial 
establishments and mines of the Middle 
States and the Middle Western States, are 
worked almost exclusively by immigrants 
from Europe, or by the children or grandchil- 

1 "Conservation Ideals in the Improvement of Plants," 
Dr. J. H. Webber, The Popular Science Monthly, New 
York, June, 1912, pp. 578-586. 



American Agriculture 165 

dren of other generations of immigrants. If 
it were not for the swarming hives of Austria- 
Hungary, Russia, and Italy, from which the 
industrial establishments recruit their labor- 
ers, there is no telling how they could be 
operated. In their old homes these laborers 
were either small farmers or farm laborers, 
but when they arrive here, instead of going 
to the country, the high wages of the factor- 
ies causes them to flock into the cities and 
towns, and begin work in the industrial 
establishments. The lure of the mill and 
factory, the mine and railroad, with their 
squalor and hardship, gilded as they are 
with the high remuneration paid, must be 
changed to the lure of the country with 
its clear skies and green fields and singing 
birds. This being a material age, however, 
the country, notwithstanding its clear skies 
and green fields and singing birds, must be 
made to give the men who are asked to go 
to it the same wages, and at least a few of 
the social advantages of the cities and towns, 
before they can be induced to enter upon a 
farming life. 

The United States is a country of such 
vast extent that perhaps the Department of 



1 66 The New Agrarianism 

Agriculture cannot properly attend to the 
details necessary to improve agriculture in 
all the forty-eight States of the Union, with 
their varied climates and productions. The 
individual States should therefore do their 
share of this mighty work. Most of the 
States already have agricultural departments, 
under various names, but only in a few States 
have they done effective work. An efficient 
agricultural department should be established 
in every State, delegated with broad powers, 
to which should be granted appropriations 
sufficient for the importance of the task 
imposed. A successful business man, without 
regard to politics, should be placed at the 
head of the department. It is a matter of 
small moment if he is not also a farmer. 
The energy and sagacity which made his 
own business successful, if employed in farm- 
ing, would make that a success also. Many 
of the largest railroads and industrial estab- 
lishments in the United States are operated 
by men who have had no practical training 
in the business of the concerns which they 
manage. E. H. Harriman was not a practi- 
cal railroad man, but he undertook the 
control of a number of unprofitable railroads, 



American Agriculture 167 

notably the Union Pacific Railroad, and 
made them the best railroads in the country, 
both in regard to profits and in the comfort 
provided for the passengers carried. A large 
part of the success of any undertaking is at- 
tributable to the operating force, and a keen 
business man possesses, in a marked degree, 
the genius for selecting proper assistants to 
carry out his directions. 

There are many questions involved which 
require the most careful consideration, but 
as the needs of the farmers vary in different 
States, it would be difficult to outline any 
particular plan of action. In one State, irri- 
gation may be required; in another it would 
be the drainage of swamps, and in still 
others the reclamation and occupation of 
deserted farms, or the prevention of specula- 
tion in farm lands. There are, however, 
subjects which are general to all the States, 
such as the formulation of laws relat- 
ing to agriculture, the taxation of farm 
property, whether it should be taxed at a 
different rate from other property, or whether 
the valuation of the land should be on a 
different basis, or whether farmers should be 
relieved of taxation, in whole or in part, or 



168 The New Agrarianism 

for a period of years. Road-making should 
receive attention, as also cooperation among 
farmers, and the question of the farmers 
pooling their farms, or the operation of their 
farms, or of placing them in corporations. 
The question of modifying the school laws 
deserves careful thought. The public schools 
might even be made the social and business 
centers of the rural communities. More 
money should be appropriated by the States 
for the establishment and maintenance of 
public schools in the country districts where 
education has made far less progress than in 
the cities and towns, and where illiteracy is 
twice as great, 1 than the country districts 
themselves can afford to raise by local taxa- 
tion. The appropriations should be based, 
not so much on the number of pupils in 
attendance at the schools, as on the necessity 
for elevating country life. This would only 
be carrying out the spirit of the public school 
laws which in effect provide that the well-to- 
do must pay, not only for the education of 
their own children, but also for the education 

1 " The Status of Rural Education in the United States," 
A. C. Monahan, United States Bureau of Education Bul- 
letin, Whole Number 515, Washington, 19 13, p. 10. 



American Agriculture 169 

of the children of those who are unable to do 
this themselves. More agricultural colleges 
and schools should be established, and colleges 
already in operation should be provided 
with resources sufficient for the establish- 
ment of agricultural departments. The ag- 
ricultural colleges and schools should be 
conveniently located in those sections of the 
State where agriculture would be most largely 
benefited; and the State should reserve to 
itself a certain number of free scholarships. 
These should be distributed on some equi- 
table and non-partisan basis, and the State 
should pay the ordinary expenses of the 
students to whom it has given the free 
scholarships. A further purpose in provid- 
ing the endowments should be to require the 
colleges to supply men properly equipped 
to go to the farmers and teach them improved 
methods of farming, and to advise them in 
farm management. 

James J. Hill, 1 when suggesting what the 
national government should do in the interest 
of agriculture, advocated the establishment 
of at least a thousand schools, which should 

1 Highways of Progress, James J. Hill, New York, pp. 
59-6o. 



170 The New Agrarianism 



take the form of model farms, where all the 
farmers living in the neighborhood could be 
taught modern farming. Instead of the 
United States Government doing this work, 
it would probably be better if the individual 
States undertook it, as they would be more 
likely to know the needs of their particular 
localities. The States should also undertake 
farm demonstration work, including the boys* 
corn clubs and the girls' canning clubs, on the 
plans inaugurated by the United States 
Department of Agriculture in the Southern 
States, which were carried to so successful a 
conclusion by its agent, Dr. Seaman A. 
Knapp, 1 that his name has become a house- 
hold word in the farming districts of the 
South. For the extension of this work into 
the Northern States, Congress last year ap- 
propriated a considerable sum of money. 

The province of Ontario, Canada, has 
evolved a scheme for the establishment of 
model farms in connection with its prisons 

1 Demonstration Work on Southern Farms, S. A. Knapp, 
Washington, 191 1, pp. 1-19; Boys' Demonstration Work: 
The Corn Clubs, Washington, 1912, pp. 1-7; Girls' Dem- 
onstration Work: The Canning Clubs, Washington, 1912, 
pp. 1-8. 



American Agriculture 171 

and jails, which provides a humane method 
of caring for the prisoners by employing them 
at farm labor, and are at the same time to be 
so conducted as to furnish suitable instruc- 
tion to the farmers. Under the Industrial 
Farms Act, passed at the session of the 
Provincial Legislature held in 191 2, every 
city and county in the province is enabled 
to establish such farms. If some such plan 
as that employed in Ontario were to be 
adopted by the States of this country, it 
would prove an ideal way of promoting 
agriculture. All the farms established under 
this method, at least so far as demonstrating 
improved methods of farming is concerned, 
should, however, for obvious reasons, be 
under the direction of the State agricultural 
departments. As part of this educational 
campaign, after the model farms have demon- 
strated the plants best adapted to particular 
localities, the States should supply the seed 
free of cost to the farmers for the operation 
of their farms. 

Much could also be done to benefit agri- 
culture if the officials of the State agricultural 
departments took a personal interest in the 
welfare of the farmers, as is done by the 



172 The New Agrarianism 

officials of the country bordering the United 
States on the north. In the Dominion of 
Canada, the Railway Commission and the 
Grain Commission, by conference with the 
railroad authorities, are often enabled to 
obtain concessions from the railroad com- 
panies, by which the movement of the crops 
is facilitated. In Manitoba, in 1912, the 
government officials procured from the rail- 
roads traversing that province a rate of one 
cent a mile for the transportation of men 
engaged to harvest the wheat crop. In 
British Columbia the railroad companies, at 
the instigation of the government, made a 
single-fare rate for the round trip for the 
men employed to harvest the fruit crop. 



CHAPTER IX 
RURAL FINANCING 

WHEN attempting to effect the regenera- 
tion of farm life, the question to be 
considered immediately after the education 
of the farmers is that of supplying them with 
the money necessary to conduct their opera- 
tions and pay their indebtedness. The 
American farmers are deeply in debt, part 
of it being for supplies and for money bor- 
rowed for short periods on personal security, 
and the balance for money borrowed for terms 
of years on the security of land. Except 
perhaps in the newer Western States, where 
staple crops are mainly grown, and the har- 
vests have been huge for several years past, 
enabling the farmers to reduce their indebted- 
ness, the debts of the farmers have been 
increasing. Accurate figures of the total 
indebtedness of the farmers are not to 
i73 



174 The New Agrarianism 

be procured, but their mortgage indebtedness 
furnishes a fair basis from which the relative 
status of the entire indebtedness can be 
judged. The mortgage indebtedness in 1 9 1 o l 
amounted to $1,726,172,851, as compared 
with a mortgage indebtedness of $1,085,995,- 
960 in 1890, while the average mortgage in- 
debtedness of each farm was $1715 in 1910, 
and $1224 in 1890. 

The sum of the interest required to be 
paid on their indebtedness by the farmers 
must be added to the cost of producing the 
crops, which again is paid by the consumer 
in the added price necessarily charged, and, 
in no inconsiderable degree, is responsible for 
the prevailing high prices of foodstuffs. The 
farmers' facilities for obtaining loans of 
money are greatly inferior to those enjoyed 
by individuals and corporations in the cities 
and larger towns. The country banks — that 
is, the banks in the small towns where the 
farmers must obtain their accommodations, 
if at all, there being no banks in the country 
proper — have generally small capitals, and 

1 Thirteenth Census of the United States, 19 10, Bulletin, 
"Agriculture: Abstract, Tenure, Mortgage Indebtedness," 
p. 9. 



Rural Financing 175 

the small capital obliges them, in order 
to avoid bankruptcy, to charge more for 
accommodating their customers than do the 
larger banks. Also the amount that the 
banks are permitted to lend to any one bor- 
rower is usually limited by law, in the case of 
national banks, to 10 per cent, of their 
capital stock and surplus. When, therefore, 
a bank's capital stock is $25,000, and its sur- 
plus $5000, $3000 is the maximum amount 
which that bank can lend, which, in many 
cases, is insufficient for the needs of the 
borrowing farmer. Another serious diffi- 
culty is because a large number of the coun- 
try banks are operating under the national 
banking laws which forbid banks to lend 
money on the security of real estate. Land 
being practically the only security which the 
farmers have to give, their money market, 
except for short-time loans on such per- 
sonal security as they may be able to obtain, 
is restricted to the banks chartered by the 
States. 

In the letter which President Taft sent 
on October 11, 19 12, to the Governors of the 
various States, inviting them to a conference 
on the subject of a farmers' credit system, 



176 The New Agrarianism 

to take place at Washington in December, 
1912, at the time of the annual conference 
of the State Governors in Richmond, Virginia, 
he stated that the farmers of the United 
States owed $6,040,000,000. He declared 
that on this sum they paid, including com- 
missions, at an average rate of 8>£ per cent, 
annually. If these figures are correct, this 
would entail on the farmers the enormous 
annual charge of $5 1 3,000,000. Corporations 
of the highest class, on the other hand, pay 
less than half the rate paid by the farmers. 
The oldest and best known railroads pay only 
4 per cent, interest on the bonds issued by 
them. On the shorter-time loans of these 
railroads, and on the shorter- time loans of 
the strong industrial and mercantile corpora- 
tions, secured only by their promissory notes, 
in the purchase of which an extensive busi- 
ness has developed in recent years among 
the banks, rarely more than 4 per cent, inter- 
est is paid. N Loans of the national govern- 
ment, bearing as low a rate of interest as 2 
per cent. , command a premium. The farmers 
should be able to borrow the money necessary 
for their wants quite as cheaply as the most 
favored borrowers. The interest rate charged 



Rural Financing 177 

them should be reduced one half, or instead 
of paying an average of 8>2 per cent., an 
average of only /\% per cent, should be ample. 
Even then, out of the 4^ per cent, charged, it 
should be possible to pay not only the inter- 
est, but a small percentage in addition, to 
be applied to the liquidation of the prin- 
cipal at the end of the period for which the 
loan was made. 

Many plans for the relief of the farmers 
in this respect are being brought forward. 
It is suggested that laws should be provided 
in those States which do not have chattel 
mortgage laws, whereby farmers could bor- 
row money on the security of their crops, 
their live stock, and their farming imple- 
ments. The most common remedy spoken 
of, however, is that of procuring money 
by cooperation among the farmers them- 
selves. In the cities and towns of the United 
States, the Building and Loan Associations, 
whose business it is to make loans to their 
members, on the security of land, out of 
funds contributed by them, are a fine example 
of what may be accomplished in this direc- 
tion. In 1 91 2 they numbered 6099, with a 
membership of 2,332,829, and assets amount- 



178 The New Agrarianism 

ing to $1,030,687,031. 1 That such coopera- 
tion would be successful among the American 
farmers is an undetermined problem. 

In most of the European countries where 
agriculture, has reached the highest stage of 
development, its success was largely due to 
the operation of the cooperative credit socie- 
ties, which were organized both to lend 
money on the security of land and on the 
personal security of the members. They all 
seem to have originated in Germany, those 
organized to make advances on the security 
of land, called Landschaften, or Provincial 
Land Banks, being the oldest. The American 
reader will be surprised to learn the length 
of time that they have been in existence. 
They were called into life in Prussia shortly 
after the Seven Years* War, in which gigantic 
struggle the nobility had sustained such 
severe losses that bankruptcy stared many 
of them in the face. The King of Prussia, 
Frederick the Great, who was as able in 
peace as in war, was much exercised for the 
want of some method of averting the finan- 
cial ruin of his nobles. A Berlin merchant 

1 The World Almanac and Encyclopedia, 1913, New 
York, p. 247. 



Rural Financing 179 

named Buring devised a scheme for a 
cooperative association intended to meet 
these demands. With some minor changes 
the plan was adopted, and on July 15, 1770, 
a Landschaft was established in the province 
of Silesia. The principle on which it was 
created, with the modifications made neces- 
sary by the reforms effected by Baron von 
Stein, particularly by the edict of October 
9, 1807, abolishing serfdom in Prussia, and 
establishing the principle of free trade in 
land, and by the modern conditions of agri- 
culture, is still the most general plan in use 
in the matter of obtaining loans on the 
security of land. From Silesia Lands chaf ten 
were introduced into the remaining provinces 
of Prussia, and into some of the other Ger- 
man states. 

The original Landschaft was described by 
Dr. von der Goltz. 1 The King of Prussia 
forced the landowners to join the Land- 
schaft, The scheme contemplated an appraise- 
ment of the estate of the borrower, who could 
only obtain a loan equal to one half the 
amount of the appraised value of the land. 

1 Geschichte der deutschen Landwirtschaft, Dr. Theodore 
Freiherr von der Goltz, Stuttgart, 1902, pp. 439-447. 



180 The New Agrarianism 

The loans were irredeemable, but by amorti- 
zation — a word whose meaning is better 
understood in Continental Europe than in 
this country, because the people there are 
more prone, when contracting debts, to pro- 
vide for their repayment — were extinguished 
at the end of certain long periods, ranging 
from thirty to seventy-five years, by the pay- 
ment of small additional sums paid with the 
installments of interest. The loans were se- 
cured by mortgages on the estates. Debentures 
(Pfandbriefen) were issued which had not 
only the security of the mortgages back of 
them, but were secured by the lands of all 
the members of the Landschaft as well. 
These were delivered to the borrower who 
sold them, and in this way received the money 
on the loan. While the organizations were 
managed by the members, they were under 
strict government supervision. In 1873, a 
majority of the Landschaften were combined 
into a Central-Landschaft, which has since 
issued debentures to the amount of many 
million marks. 1 At the present time any 
one owning land on which a certain small 

1 Agrarpolitik, Regierungsrat Professor Dr. Joseph 
Grunzel, Vienna, 1910, p. 58. 



Rural Financing 181 

annual land tax is paid may become a mem- 
ber ; and is privileged to borrow not exceeding 
two-thirds the assessed value of the land for 
taxation. The debentures bear from three 
to four per cent, interest, and being well 
regarded by investors can readily be sold, 
those bearing the higher rate bringing the 
higher price, the four per cent, debentures 
selling at about par. The borrower can 
repay the loan at any time. 

The cooperative credit societies, whose 
particular object is to make loans on the 
personal security of the members and which 
are much more numerous than the Land- 
schqften, owe their origin to the distress 
prevailing in Germany in "the lean years of 
poverty and famine during the European 
revolutions of the middle of the last cen- 
tury. " The Quarterly Review 1 contains a 
summary of the history and manner of 
operation of the German credit societies, 
based on Henry W. Wolff's exhaustive study of 
the subject. 2 Friederich Wilhelm Raiffeisen 

1 " Cooperative Credit Societies and the Land," The 
Quarterly Review, London, April, 191 1, pp. 299-323. 

2 People's Banks, Henry W. Wolff, third edition, London, 
1910, pp. 77-165, 



1 82 The New Agrarianism 

and Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch — 
Delitzsch being added to his name by Mr. 
Schulze after the town of that name, in 
which he was born — two economic reformers, 
were the founders, and their plans differed 
somewhat in the details. These men saw 
that credit was necessary for artisans and 
agriculturists, but that credit was not obtain- 
able without security; artisans and agricul- 
turists had little or no security to offer, and 
were therefore liable to pay whatever usuri- 
ous interest the money-lenders chose to 
demand for the credit which was vital 
to their existence. Both Raiffeisen and 
Schulze-Delitzsch hit upon the remedy of 
combining the honest and laborious artisans 
and agriculturists into mutually responsible 
bodies, which were to acquire capital by 
"pooling their entire credit, so as to obtain 
advances at a cheap rate from outside 
capitalists." Raiffeisen first founded a loan 
society in 1849 and Schulze-Delitzsch one 
in 1850. The scheme of Schulze-Delitzsch 
was designed for the benefit of the middle- 
class tradesmen and artisans, and provided 
for a share capital. Raiffeisen's plan aimed 
more particularly to benefit the poorer classes 



Rural Financing 183 

of agriculturists who could not obtain credit 
as generally they possessed no tangible prop- 
erty of sufficient value to be pledged. The 
only possible pledge was that of the intangi- 
ble assets of honesty, industry, and business 
talent. Such security as they could give ex- 
isted only in driblets, and required to be 
unified by the assumption of collective limited 
or unlimited liability, in a cooperative bank 
or some similar institution, before the capi- 
talist would lend money upon it as a matter 
of business. In no other way could a mark- 
etable personal security sufficient to justify 
personal credit and to admit of "the capitali- 
zation of honesty' ' be created. Ordinary 
bankers did not care to give credit to agricul- 
turists, firstly, because the credit was required 
for an uncertain period, generally too short 
for permanent investment, and too long for 
occasional lending; and, secondly, because 
they had no means of investigating the 
financial position of small borrowers, whether 
artisans or agriculturists. 

The practical workings of the societies 
present an interesting subject for study. 
For their successful management, there are 
requisite a maximum of responsibility on the 



1 84 The New Agrarianism 

part of the individual members, a minimum 
of risk of pecuniary loss, and a maximum of 
publicity in the management. Their moral 
effect is great. They teach those benefited 
to help themselves; but, if charity is substi- 
tuted for self-help, the moral and educational 
benefits are lost. The members of a coopera- 
tive credit society will not make themselves 
pecuniarily responsible for a brother member 
whom they do not know to be scrupulously 
honest, thrifty, and capable in business. 
The influence of the societies in promoting 
the growth of these desirable qualities is 
immense. A certain standard of education 
and ability to read and write are essential for 
admission to membership. Those who do 
not possess these qualifications will strive 
to obtain them. It cannot, therefore, be 
doubted that these societies conduce to the 
improvement of the worldly position, the 
moral character, and the intellectual progress 
of their members. 

Raiffeisen's associations differed originally 
from those of the Schulze-Delitzsch system 
in having no shares and paying no divi- 
dends. They were forced to have both by 
the law of 1889; but the shares are made as 



Rural Financing 185 

small as possible, and the dividends are 
voted away to the Ordinary Reserve Fund 
and to the Indivisible Reserve, to which 
two thirds of the annual profits are always 
assigned. The Indivisible Reserve is in- 
tended to meet losses and deficiencies for 
which it would be hard to hold individual 
members responsible. It is also intended to 
supply the place of borrowed capital, so as 
to allow members to borrow at a cheaper 
rate. The loans, being mostly for agricul- 
tural purposes, are made for a longer time 
than loans under the Schulze-Delitzsch sys- 
tem; but they can be called in if the debtor 
does not apply them to the purpose for 
which they have been asked. The sphere of 
operation of a Raifleisen Bank is strictly 
confined to a small area. There are two 
reasons for this. The first is, that the mem- 
bers cannot otherwise sympathize with and 
be intimately acquainted with each other; 
the second being that, without the first, they 
will not assume the mutual unlimited finan- 
cial responsibility which is required. The 
Raifleisen associations in Germany are feder- 
ated into thirteen Unions, each with their 
Central Bank; and since 1895 there has been 



1 86 The New Agrarianism 

in Prussia a state-endowed Central Cooper- 
ative Credit Bank. 

The scheme of the cooperative credit 
associations, more or less closely patterned 
after the plan of Raifleisen, has been car- 
ried all over Europe. It has spread into 
Italy, France, Russia, Servia, Spain, Bel- 
gium, Holland, and Finland. The govern- 
ment of India has established the Raifleisen 
system of credit associations in that far-away 
land; and Japan, ever watchful to adopt the 
most approved ideas, has done the same for 
her people. Switzerland also has its coopera- 
tive system. England began the establish- 
ment of credit banks on the Raiffeisen plan 
with the operation of the Small Holdings and 
Allotments Act of 1908. 

Affiliated with the credit associations of 
Germany are the farmers' cooperative stores 
for the supply of agricultural requisites of 
all kinds and for the sale of agricultural 
products. These have increased enormously. 
They enable the farmers to purchase their 
fertilizers and other materials direct from the 
manufacturers, and they have brought into 
existence the parish steam ploughs and 
parish reaping machines ; they have collected 



Rural Financing 187 

the farmers' produce, their corn, potatoes, 
fruit, milk, and eggs, and have found for it 
a sale at better prices than the farmers would 
have been able to obtain if standing alone. 

That credit associations modeled upon 
those of Germany would succeed in the 
United States can only be determined 
after a most careful comparison of conditions 
as they obtain in Germany and in this coun- 
try. The temperaments of the peoples are 
widely different. In rural Germany the 
farmers live largely in close proximity to one 
another, or in village communities, and on 
farms which would be considered almost 
minute in this country. The farms of Ger- 
many in 1907 numbered 5,736,082, and of 
these 3,378,509 were three acres or less in 
extent, while the average size of all the 
farms was only about fifteen acres. 1 In the 
United States the farms have an average 
area of 138. 1 acres. Owing to the size of 
the American farms, and the distance 
between the farmhouses, the relations exist- 
ing between the farmers can never be as 
intimate as those prevailing among the 
German farmers. 

1 Modern Germany, J. Ellis Barker, London, 1909, p. 370. 



1 88 The New Agrarianism 

In other countries, even in those where 
the government assists its people in acquir- 
ing farms, modern sentiment has made pro- 
vision for laws, by which the farmers can 
obtain long-time loans ranging from ten to 
seventy-five years, on the security of their 
land. The loans bear a low rate of interest, 
payable with which is a small percentage in 
addition, which is sufficient to pay the loan 
on the date of its maturity. The plan seems 
to be an application of the system pursued 
in France by the Credit Fonder de France, 
a private banking institution, which is under 
the direct control of the Minister of Finance, 
and is itself an adaptation to French condi- 
tions of the plan of the German Landschaften. 
The Credit Fonder de France secures the 
necessary funds by issuing its bonds which 
bear 3 per cent, interest, and are based on 
the security of the lands mortgaged, as well 
as on the bank's assets. At this time, on 
loans maturing in seventy-five years, the 
interest rate is 4.30 per cent, and includ- 
ing the percentage necessary for the crea- 
tion of the sinking fund, which is provided 
for the liquidation of the loans at maturity, 
and for a small charge made for the ex- 



Rural Financing 189 

pense of the sale of the bonds, the total 
amount that the borrowers are required to 
pay is only 4.48 per cent. 1 

The plan has gained a strong foothold in 
a number of the British colonial possessions. 
In all the states of Australia the govern- 
ments make advances on farm lands. 2 The 
procedure is practically the same in all 
states. In Victoria the money is provided 
by the sale of bonds, and the borrower can 
obtain as high as sixty per cent, of the value 
of his land. The loans bear interest at the 
rate of ^}4 per cent, per annum, and a pay- 
ment of 6 per cent, will, in thirty-one and a 
half years, pay the debt and the interest. In 
the colony of New Zealand a similar scheme 
is in operation. Nova Scotia has passed an 
act providing for government advances to 
farmers. In the Canadian provinces of Sas- 
katchewan, Alberta, Manitoba, and British 
Columbia, an agitation is in progress through 
which it is expected to gain for the farmers 
of these provinces the same advantages in 

'"The Credit Foncier de France," Peter G. Zaldari, 
Moody's Magazine, New York, June, 1912, pp. 437-441. 

3 British Columbia Magazine, Vancouver, July, 1912, 
PP- 551-554. 



190 The New Agrarianism 

the matter of loans possessed by the farmers 
of the other British dependencies. 

The credit of the United States, in the 
money markets of the world, stands much 
higher than that of the English colonies, its 
bonds selling even higher than the British 
consols, the German Imperial bonds, and the 
French rentes. The United States Govern- 
ment could easily sell its bonds, of the 
character of the bonds issued by govern- 
ments of the British colonies, bearing not 
more than 3 per cent, interest and lend the 
money realized at a rate not to exceed from 
2^/2 to 4 per cent, which would include the 
amount required to provide a sinking fund 
with which to liquidate the loan, and also to 
reimburse the government for the entire cost 
of the transaction. Nor is it a new depart- 
ure for the national government to advance 
money for the improvement of land used for 
agricultural purposes. On June 17, 1902, 
Congress passed the Reclamation Act, the 
purpose of which is to improve lands by irri- 
gation. Under this act the government has 
paid out large sums of money, by which 
great benefits were conferred, in certain of 
the Western States, particularly in those 



Rural Financing 191 

States in which the farmers are now in such 
a questioning attitude toward the present 
scheme of government. To June 30, 191 1, 1 
there has been expended under this law for 
the building, maintenance, and operation of 
irrigation works, the enormous sum of 
$65,812,919, although the government ex- 
pects to be reimbursed for the greater part of 
the outlay, by the reception of the annual in- 
stallments — spread over a period of ten years 
— in which the purchasers of the reclaimed 
lands are allowed to pay for their farms. No 
interest is charged on the deferred payments, 
the government contributing to that extent 
to the purchasers, in this respect doing more 
than would be required if it made loans to 
farmers on some plan similar to that so 
successfully pursued in other countries. 

1 Tenth Annual Report of the Reclamation Service, 19 10- 
191 1, Washington, 1912, p. 48. 



CHAPTER X 
IRISH LAND REFORMS 

THE American people do not often turn 
to Ireland for inspiration when mak- 
ing a new departure in an important enter- 
prise, but they might go farther and fare 
worse, when beginning the regeneration of 
agriculture, than to read the history of 
Ireland for the last thirty or forty years. 
For generations, Ireland was known in the 
United States as the land of abortive upris- 
ings, of a rebellious people, of sT swarming 
emigration, of a dwindling population, of a 
dissatisfied tenantry, of poverty and distress. 
Horace Greeley, visiting the island in 1851, 1 
wrote of it : 

Out of the towns not one habitation in ten is 
fit for human beings to live in, being mere low 

1 Glances at Europe, Horace Greeley, New York, 1851, 

PP- 309-331. 

192 



Irish Land Reforms 193 

cramped hovels of rock, mud and straw ; not one 
half the families seem to have so much as an 
acre of land to each household ; not one half the 
men to be seen have coats to their backs ; and 
not one in four of the women and children have 
each a pair of shoes or stockings. . . . Wretched- 
ness, rags and despair salute me on every side. 
In those narrow, unlighted, earth-floored, straw- 
thatched cabins, there is no room for the father 
and his sons to sit down and enjoy an evening, 
so they straggle off to the nearest groggery. 

With the accuracy of judgment for which 
he was noted, Mr. Greeley attributed the 
state of the Irish people to the lack of a 
local parliament, which in his opinion would 
alone be familiar with the necessities and 
desires of the people, and to their need of the 
privilege of owning the land cultivated and 
improved by them. 

A quarter of a century later, Henry 
M. Field, the editor of the Evangelist, also 
wrote out his impressions of Ireland. 1 The 
beauty of the landscape caused him to draw 
a charming picture of the scenery through 
which he traveled: 

1 From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn, Henry 
M. Field, New York, 1877, pp. 17-23. 

13 



194 The New Agrarianism 

"The ivy mantled every old tower and 
ruin with the richest green; the hawthorn 
was in blossom, making the hedge-rows, as 
we whirled along the roads, a mass of white 
and green, filling the eye with its beauty 
and the air with its fragrance." 

Human life, however, presented to Mr. 
Field as dreary a picture of desolation as 
that so vividly described by Horace Greeley. 
The high state of cultivation to be seen on 
the great estates, like that of the Earl of Ken- 
mare, contrasted with the want and misery 
close by, caused him to say sorrowfully: 

It will not do to impute the latter entirely to 
the natural shiftlessness of the Irish people, as 
if they would rather beg than work. They have 
very little motive to work. They cannot own a 
foot of the soil. The Earl of Kenmare may 
have thousands of acres for his game, but not 
a foot will he sell to an Irish laborer, however 
worthy or industrious. Hence the inevitable 
tendency of things is to impoverish more and 
more the wretched peasant. . . . Hence the 
feeling of sadness that mingles with all this 
beauty around me ; that this is a country where 
all is for the few, and nothing for the many; 
where the poor starve, while a few nobles and 



Irish Land Reforms 195 

rich landlords can spend their substance in 
riotous living. 

Applicable as well to Ireland as to England, 
Mr. Field quoted the complaint of the English 
agrarian workman in Kingsley's novel: 

O! England is a pleasant place 
for them that 's great and high, 

But England is a wretched place 
for them that 's poor as I. 

At the very time that Mr. Field was 
writing, a new star of the first magnitude 
appeared on the political horizon of Ireland, 
in the entry of Charles Stewart Parnell into 
Parliament. Undistinguished at first, he 
soon set in motion forces which accomplished 
for Ireland that which, in the light of its 
former history, appears almost magical. A 
Protestant representing a Roman Catholic 
constituency, he possessed the confidence 
alike of the clergy and laity of the Roman 
Church; and his visit to America, on a mis- 
sion in the interest of his beloved cause 
during the height of his career, is still cher- 
ished in this country in the breast of every 
lover of progress. R. Barry O'Brien wrote 
a life of Parnell in which every incident of the 



196 The New Agrarianism 



reformer's stormy career is powerfully por- 
trayed. 1 Upon his entry into public life 
Parnell found the English members of Par- 
liament either contemptuous of or indifferent 
to Irish affairs. The Irish members had 
hitherto failed to interfere in English mat- 
ters, and, whenever they attempted some- 
thing for the benefit of Ireland, they were 
humiliated without mercy. Parnell realized 
almost immediately that, to gain any tactical 
advantage, the Irish must take part in the 
discussion of everything in which the English 
were concerned; and, in revolt against the 
man who then led the Irish members, he be- 
gan a campaign of obstruction. His ability 
soon gained him the headship of the Irish 
party in Parliament. He saw "that a 
healthy and vigorous public opinion was 
necessary to save Irish representation from 
inertia and collapse, " and he began the crea- 
tion of such an opinion by entering upon 
a campaign of enlightenment. 

The crops had been poor for some years, 
the rents were unpaid, the tenants were in 

1 The Life of Charles Stewart Parnell, R. Barry O'Brien. 
New York, 1898, 2 vols.: vol. i., pp. 1-378; vol. ii., pp. 1- 
394- 



Irish Land Reforms 197 

distress; evictions followed. On October 21, 
1879, tne Irish National Land League was 
organized for the purpose of "bringing about 
a reduction of rack rents, and facilitating 
the creation of a peasant proprietary," with 
Parnell as president. The distress in the 
west of Ireland became appalling; it was 
estimated that there was a falling off in the 
principal crops, from the yield of the previous 
year, to the value of £10,000,000. Famine 
was upon the land, evictions increased, and 
the fires of agitation blazed in every district 
of Ireland. The Land League had grown by 
leaps and bounds; it now had two hundred 
branches throughout Ireland, with at least 
five hundred members in each branch. Par- 
nell was everywhere engaged in agitation. 
A speech that he delivered at this time was 
the cause of the introduction of a new word 
into the English language. He was dis- 
cussing evictions, and told his listeners that 
when a man took a farm, from which another 
had been evicted, they must show him how 
they detested him "by leaving him severely 
alone, by putting him into a moral Coventry, 
by isolating him from his kind as if he were a 
leper of old. " From the name of the person 



198 The New Agrarianism 

who first felt the weight of the peasants' 
displeasure, the policy of isolation received 
the only too-well-known name of Boycott. 
The self-constituted Land League had be- 
come the supreme power in Ireland; money 
poured into its treasury, not only from Ire- 
land, but from America. Its mandates were 
everywhere obeyed. "It was in truth," 
as Mr. O'Brien relates, "nothing more 
nor less than a provisional Irish Govern- 
ment, stronger, because based on popular 
suffrage, than the Government at the 
Castle"; and Parnell was what the Irish 
people delighted to call him, the " Uncrowned 
King of Ireland." 

In some districts extremists were in con- 
trol of the Land League, and outrages were 
committed, even murder. It had been 
Parnell's opinion, when attaching himself to 
the Land League, that when the people 
once became aroused by actual distress, or 
by the passion engendered by the sense of 
wrong committed against them, they might 
inaugurate such a reign of terror as that 
which was now injuring the Irish cause. 
In England a clamor arose for the exercise 
of strong measures, and the government 



Irish Land Reforms 199 

determined upon repression, and arrested 
Parnell and other leading Land Leaguers 
to whom they attributed the outbreak; but 
on their trial the jury disagreed and the 
prisoners were discharged. The Coercion 
Bill followed, which gave the government 
the power to arrest any person reasonably 
suspected of treasonable practices or agrarian 
outrages. On its enactment into law the 
Land League was suppressed. Hundreds 
of Land Leaguers were thrown into Kil- 
mainham prison. Parnell himself was once 
more arrested, but, after an imprisonment 
of seven months, was released, there being 
no evidence connecting him with the prevail- 
ing terrorism. His release caused the resig- 
nation from the Cabinet of the Secretary of 
State for Ireland, and of the Viceroy, the 
two men who were mainly responsible for 
his arrest, and who were chagrined at his 
release. The leaders in the government at 
the time of Parnell's release also voluntarily 
agreed to pass an Arrears Bill, the prepara- 
tion of which was practically all Parnell's 
work, under which the government under- 
took to pay a certain portion of the arrears 
of rent due by the tenants. 



200 The New Agrarianism 

The greatest newspaper in England, the 
London Times, published letters signed 
with the name of Parnell, condoning 
the murder in Phoenix Park, Dublin, of 
Lord Frederick Cavendish, the chief secre- 
tary of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and of 
Mr. Burke, the under-secretary. When the 
forger who wrote the letters confessed his 
crime, Parnell became a greater idol than 
ever with the Irish people. On October 6, 
1 89 1, at the early age of forty-five years, 
he died. Although his last years were 
darkened by the shadow of an episode 
occurring in his private life, the sorrow of 
the Irish people at his death was so intense, 
that no words could be more expressive of 
their passionate grief than the requiem which 
Thomas Osborne Davis intoned for an Irish 
hero of an older time: 

Wail — wail ye for the Mighty One! Wail — wail 

ye for the Dead ! 
Quench the hearth, and hold the breath — with 

ashes strew the head! 
How tenderly we loved him ! How deeply we 

deplore ! 
Holy Saviour ! but to think we shall never see 

him more. 



Irish Land Reforms 201 

It was the overpowering mentality of Par- 
nell that brought about the primary of the 
two reforms which Mr. Greeley said were 
essential to the regeneration of Ireland, the 
peasant proprietorship of the land. Par- 
nell' s labors served to awaken the conscience 
of the English politicians, and the govern- 
ment was forced to admit that it had erred 
in its treatment of Ireland. The result was 
the most sweeping land legislation that was 
ever enacted in any country for the benefit 
of the occupants of the soil. The laws 
provided that the tenants might purchase 
the land occupied by them, the government 
to supply the purchase money, which was 
to be loaned to the purchasers for a long 
term of years at a low rate of interest, the 
land itself, in one shape or another, forming 
the security. A land commission practically 
fixed the prices to the purchasers, and 
scrutinized the security for the government. 
The most beneficent of the earlier acts was 
the one passed in the year that Parnell died. 
In 1903 a still more liberal law was placed 
on the statute books. In pursuance of the 
land purchase acts which have become laws 
since 1881, the year that Parnell' s power in 



202 The New Agrarianism 

parliamentary life first became pronounced, x 
to May 31, 1908, there was made a total 
of 117,723 purchases, aggregating the 
enormous sum of £41,553,806. Also, there 
were enacted the law for the building of 
laborers' cottages, and the law creating the 
Congested Districts Board, by virtue of 
which more than twenty-five thousand 
cottages have been erected by the govern- 
ment, to be paid for on plans similar to the 
one provided for in the land acts. 

With the ground prepared, a directing 
genius appeared in Ireland, who realized 
that the time had arrived for another step 
in the advancement of the Irish people; and 
he began a movement for the improvement of 
the agriculture of the island. Sir Horace 
Plunkett, who placed the second rung in the 
ladder of Irish progress, is an aristocrat, 2 
and, like Parnell, a descendant of the alien 
English. His only land experience was that 
gained in the United States, where he had 
roughed it for ten years on a Wyoming 
ranch, but he had an ambition to benefit 
his countrymen without regard to race or 

1 One Irish Summer, Wi-lliam Eleroy Curtis, New York, 
1909, pp. 68-69. 2 Ibid., pp. 410-41 1. 



Irish Land Reforms 203 

religion. He brought this about through the 
agency of a national organization of about 
four hundred members, most of whom, like 
the large majority of the men who are at- 
tempting to bring about a new birth of 
agriculture in the United States, had no con- 
nection with farming. It was called the Irish 
Agricultural Organization Society — the I. A. 
O. S. of popular parlance, which to-day em- 
braces over nine hundred societies, with a 
membership of almost one hundred thou- 
sand. 1 It was the influence which this 
cooperative movement exerted that enabled 
Sir Horace Plunkett, in 1899, to carry out 
his scheme for the establishment of the De- 
partment of Agriculture and Technical 
Instruction, of which he became the head. 
The department was the direct result of Sir 
Horace Plunkett's " Proposal Affecting the 
General Welfare of Ireland." Conformably 
to the call, a committee was organized to 
outline a plan of procedure. 

Among its members were to be found repre- 
sentatives, and in nearly all cases the best rep- 

1 Aspects of the Irish Question, Sidney Brooks, Boston, 
1912, p. 117. 



204 The New Agrarianism 

resentatives, of every class, interest, industry, 
creed and party in Ireland. Orangemen and 
Jesuits, Unionists and Nationalists, the magnates 
of the Industrial North, the leaders of the agri- 
cultural South and West, sat side by side in 
absolute harmony, and after months of exhaus- 
tive investigation in Ireland and abroad pre- 
sented a unanimous report. The substance of 
its recommendations was that a new government 
department should be created, which should be 
adequately endowed, and charged wit-h the duty 
of administering state aid to the agriculture and 
industries of Ireland, in such a way as to evoke, 
without superseding, self-help and individual 
initiative. x 

The main purpose of the Department of 
Agriculture and Technical Instruction, which 
now has an endowment of nearly twelve 
million dollars a year, is to teach the peo- 
ple scientific methods of agriculture. With 
this object in view it established a Faculty of 
Agriculture at the Royal College of Science 
in Dublin where free competitive scholarships 
are liberally provided. It reorganized the 

r "Sir Horace Plunkett and His Works," Sidney 
Brooks, The Fortnightly Review, London, June I, 19 12, 
pp. 1011-1021. 



Irish Land Reforms 205 

Albert Agricultural College at Clasnevin, at 
which place a horticultural school to teach 
fruit-growing has been established. The 
Munster Institute at Cork teaches girls 
butter-making, poultry-rearing, calf-rearing, 
cooking, laundry-work, sewing, and garden- 
ing. Local schools and classes were established 
in different parts of Ireland. Itinerant in- 
structors in agriculture are sent all over Ire- 
land, whose duty it is to conduct classes and 
to carry out field demonstrations and experi- 
ments. The vital matter of improving the 
live stock is also one of the important func- 
tions of the Department of Agriculture and 
Technical Instruction. The special investi- 
gations set on foot to determine the crops 
that are best adapted for particular locali- 
ties and to decide what new crops can be 
grown are invaluable. Sir Horace Plunkett 
confirms the opinions of the other land re- 
formers when he attributes his success with 
the Irish farmers to the fact that he taught 
them the ways of business. His reasoning 
is convincing: 

Better business implies the introduction of 
system into the marketing of produce, the ac- 



206 The New Agrarianism 

quisition of farmers' requirements on reasonable 
terms, the obtaining of working capital at a low 
rate of interest, and upon terms suitable to the 
conditions of farming. It seeks further to enable 
the farmer to hold his own in his relations with 
those organized interests, whether financial, in- 
dustrial, commercial or political, which largely 
control his wealth. * 

Freed of its absentee landlordism, and the 
land coming gradually to be owned by the 
men who cultivate it, Ireland has begun a 
new national life. The long night of op- 
pression and neglect is over, and the dawn 
of a brighter era has broken. The noisome 
hovels of Horace Greeley's time and of Henry 
M. Field's time are now such a rarity, ex- 
cept in the West in what is termed the Con- 
gested Districts where owing to the extreme 
poverty both of the soil and the people, the 
task of regeneration has been slower than else- 
where, as by their absence to create remark 
from old travelers. In their places are neat 
cottages built of concrete, with slate or tile 
roofs. The people are well clothed and 
cleanly, and the poverty-stricken, prodigal, 

1 "The Regeneration of Ireland," Sir Horace Plunkett, 
The Atlantic Monthly, Boston, June, 1912, pp. 812-813. 



Irish Land Reforms 207 

brawling Ireland of Charles Lever and Samuel 
Lover, as well as the sweetly sentimental 
Ireland of Thomas Moore, have disappeared. 
Its agitators are quiet ; boycotts and coercion 
are nightmares of the past. With peace and 
prosperity, contentment and happiness have 
taken possession of the people. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE AGRARIANS OF GERMANY 

IN the United States there are numerous 
agricultural associations, and although 
in many of the States they are receiving 
small bounties either from the counties in 
which they are located, or from the States, 
or from both, they have accomplished com- 
paratively little, and their influence is limited. 
It is a fact well known among those engaged 
in manufacturing that, notwithstanding the 
rigid manner in which the Sherman Law is 
being enforced, many classes of manufac- 
turers still maintain organizations, and meet 
to discuss the industry in which they are 
engaged. They plan for its improvement, and 
watch the legislation pending in nation 
and State which might affect their interests, 
and originate new laws intended to benefit 
the industry. Jobbers and retailers are like- 
wise occupied, as are labor unions, the most 
208 



The Agrarians of Germany 209 

aggressive of all the associations organized 
from interested motives. Only the farmers 
are without effective organization, and only 
agriculture is allowed to lie becalmed. The 
agricultural interests should bring the united 
influence of their entire calling to bear on 
legislation. A fundamental change in the 
condition of farming, by which the adjust- 
ment between farming and industry is to be 
effected, can only be brought about by legis- 
lation of the most radical character. Legis- 
lation has done practically all to establish 
and foster industry, which has been glorified 
to the neglect of the farmers. But the 
cooperation of the manufacturers and mer- 
chants should be sought, and the manufac- 
turers and merchants should be only too 
willing to join hands with the farmers in a 
matter which is vital to all. Large crops 
mean directly and indirectly large volumes of 
business to the manufacturers and merchants, 
and prosperity to the whole country. With 
an increase in the amount of foodstuffs pro- 
duced, the prices of the staple articles of food 
would decline, to effect which is the primary 
aim of the entire land movement. Laboring 

men of all classes should be induced to join 
14 



210 The New Agrarianism 

the movement for better farming, as no one 
would feel the benefit of this more than the 
workingmen. 

Germany, the most progressive nation in 
Europe, has long since recognized the value 
of political organization among the farmers, 
and the lesson which it presents to the 
American farmers is even more valuable 
than the one to be drawn from the work 
done in Ireland by Parnell and Sir Horace 
Plunkett. As long ago as 1875, Prince 
Bismarck, in an address to the farmers, 
advised them to organize. "Formerly, " he 
declared, "it was 'God helps those who help 
themselves. ' Now in our constitutional state, 
if the farmer helps himself, he will receive 
the assistance of the government." 

Prince Bismarck's words sank deep into 
the hearts of the farmers, and when, in 1893, 
the emergency arose, the advice was recalled, 
and they began helping themselves by 
forming what has since become the most 
powerful agricultural organization in the 
world. The crisis was the outgrowth of 
economic conditions. Germany was rapidly 
changing from an agricultural to a manu- 
facturing nation. The manufacturers were 



The Agrarians of Germany 2 1 1 

in search of new markets in other countries 
for the sale of their increasing products, and 
urged the government to conclude a series of 
foreign treaties which should give German 
manufactures advantages not possessed by- 
other nations. In order to bring this about 
the government found it necessary to make 
certain concessions injurious to the farmers. 
In 1 89 1 it entered into treaties with Austria- 
Hungary, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland, 
under which Germany lowered its duty on 
grain to 3.50 marks per 100 kilograms for 
equivalent concessions on industrial products 
exported to those countries. A similar 
treaty was made with Servia in 1892. When 
the question of concluding like treaties with 
Roumania, and with Russia, the greatest 
grain-growing country in Europe, was under 
discussion, the farmers rose up in arms, fear- 
ful that the proposed treaties would greatly 
stimulate the importation of grain from 
those countries, and consequently lower the 
price of the home-grown grain. A wild cry 
of distress went up. 

Herr Ruprecht, a Prussian tenant farmer 
of the province of Silesia, with a vision far 
beyond that of his fellows, published on 



212 The New Agrarianism 

December 21, 1892, in an obscure agricul- 
tural journal, his well-known "Proposal for 
the Improvement of Our Condition." The 
seed was cast on fallow ground, and on 
February 18, 1893, in pursuance of this call, 
under Herr Ruprecht's leadership the Bund 
der Landwirte (Agriculturists' Union) was 
organized, with an immediate membership 
of seven thousand landowners. The German 
flag with a plough in the center became its 
banner. Although the organization failed to 
prevent the ratification of the treaties with 
Roumania and Russia, it grew so rapidly in 
membership and influence that it effected 
the downfall of the Chancellor, Count von 
Caprivi, the author of the distasteful treaties. 
The first president of the new organization 
was Captain von Ploetz, a former Prussian 
officer who after having served in the war 
of 1866 against Austria, and in the war of 
1 870-1 87 1 against France, had become a 
captain in the Landwehr. Thereafter he 
devoted himself to the advancement of agri- 
cultural life, and at this time was president 
of the Deutsche Bauernbund (German Peas- 
ants' Alliance), an organization founded in 
1885, which already had 44,000 members; 



The Agrarians of Germany 213 

and which on June 17, 1893, was merged in 
the Bund der Landwirte. The object was: 

To unite into an organization, every agricul- 
tural interest, regardless of political affiliation 
or extent of estate, in order that the influence 
possessed by agriculture may be exerted upon 
legislation, and to obtain for agriculture the 
representation in the parliamentary bodies to 
which its importance entitles it. 

The members of the Bund der Landwirte 
were at once dubbed by their enemies 
11 Agrarians, " a title by which an association 
of revenue and land reformers had been 
known in 1876, but which, having been or- 
ganized in the interest of the larger land- 
owners, had not gained the confidence of the 
small farmers. For this reason it was sup- 
posed that the name would deter the small 
landowners from attaching themselves to the 
Bund der Landwirte. The leaders of the new 
movement were wiser than their critics and 
welcomed the appellation. The earliest ap- 
plication of the term " agrarian' ' had been 
to the laws enacted in ancient Rome for 
the disposal among the poorer citizens of the 
public lands occupied without right by the 



214 The New Agrarianism 

Patricians. A knowledge of this fact, it was 
argued, would prove attractive to the peas- 
ants, without alienating the larger land- 
owners, on whom the name "agrarian" had 
become fastened through the connection of 
some of their class with the older organiza- 
tion. Besides the name had been associated 
with, and was descriptive of, every land and 
agricultural reform movement of modern 
times, and would be the one to conjure with 
in the present exigency. 

The membership in the Bund der Land- 
wirte was not limited to agriculturists, but 
all persons professing the Christian religion 
and having a friendly interest in agriculture 
were invited to become members. The or- 
ganization is so constituted and hemmed in 
by regulations that it is almost impossible 
for the violent or lawless element ever to ob- 
tain control, as in the case of the Irish Land 
League. The primary bodies of the Bund 
der Landwirte are the Village Groups, con- 
sisting of the members living in contiguous 
neighborhoods. The Village Groups com- 
pose the Chief Groups. The Chief Groups 
make up the District Divisions, the District 
Divisions the Electoral District Divisions; 



The Agrarians of Germany 215 

and these constitute the body for the par- 
ticular province or country. The national 
organization meets annually in Berlin. The 
members are required to pay annual dues 
which are small and are graded according to 
the size of the estate owned, the amount 
formerly being ten pfennigs per hectare of 
land, or 3 per cent, of the ground rent paid; 
but every member was required to pay the 
minimum amount of two marks. In 1906 
there was an advance of 50 per cent, in the 
dues, which increased the average amount 
paid by each member from 2.32 marks to 
3.48 marks. 

The story of the birth and progress of the 
Bund der Landwirte, 1 contains much that is 
of value to the economist interested in bring- 
ing about land reforms. In the course of its 
development, departments were created for 
the purchase of fertilizers, as well as feed for 
the cattle, and coal. There was a legal de- 
partment for furnishing legal advice and a de- 
partment of bookkeeping the object of which 

1 Zum 18. Februar, 1903, Zehn Jahre wirtschafts- 
politischen Kampfes, Berlin, 1903, pp. 1-193; Zum 18. 
Februar, 1908, Funf Jahre der Sammlung und Festigung, 
1903-1908, Berlin, 1908, pp. 1-157. 



216 The New Agrarianism 

was to open books for the farmers and to 
teach them business methods. A department 
was established for forming cooperative as- 
sociations among the farmers, and an insur- 
ance department to give information and 
advice in all matters pertaining to insurance. 
The association moved rapidly in its search 
for parliamentary representation. On May 
6, 1893, the Reichstag was dissolved and the 
Bund der Landwirte, although far from being 
prepared, at once plunged into a political 
campaign. It was so successful that its 
president, Captain von Ploetz, was elected 
a member of the Reichstag, as were also one 
hundred and forty others, whose election 
the organization had advocated and who, 
at its request, formed a Parliamentary Union 
pledged to support the legislation advocated 
by the Bund der Landwirte. Captain von 
Ploetz was elected president of the Union; 
and with this compact body of law-makers 
at its back ready to do its bidding, the 
Bund der Landwirte was enabled to procure 
the enactment of a mass of legislation favor- 
able to the interests of the farmers, all of 
which is distinctly reflected in the present 
satisfactory state of agriculture in Germany. 



The Agrarians of Germany 217 

The organization rarely had candidates of its 
own in the field, either for the national or the 
local parliaments. The usual method pur- 
sued was to indorse candidates, known to be 
friendly to it, of the various existing political 
parties. The work of the Bund der Land- 
wirte in recent years has been so effective 
that, at the election of 1907, out of the one 
hundred and thirty-eight members of the 
national parliament indorsed by it, consisting 
of adherents of practically all the political 
parties, every one was elected, while previous 
to that time only ninety-nine of the same 
seats had been filled by men so indorsed. 

Being ably directed, the Bund der Land- 
wirte has generally advocated measures of 
recognized value. In Prussia it met with 
early success. In 1894, a ^ its instigation, 
the Prussian Landtag enacted a law which 
regulated agricultural societies, and provided 
for Farmers' Chambers (Landwirtschaftskam- 
mern) , composed of farmers in whose hands 
was placed the administration of agricultural 
affairs. ■ The duty of the Farmers' Chambers 

1 Die Entwicklung der wirtschaftlichen Ideen im ig. 
Jahrhundert, Eugen von Philippovich, Tubingen, 1910, 
pp. 113-114- 



218 The New Agrarianism 

is to further the combined interests of agri- 
culture and forestry in the districts in 
which they are located, and especially to 
bring about greater cooperative organiza- 
tion among the farmers. For their own 
purposes, the Chambers possess the power 
of taxation, and have a voice in the man- 
agement of the produce exchanges and 
markets. In Saxony, Hesse, Anhalt, and 
Alsace-Lorraine, organizations of a similar 
character have also been established by law. 
In 1896, the Bund der Landwirte procured 
the passage by the Reichstag of the law pro- 
hibiting speculation in futures in cereals on 
the German Stock Exchange; and, in 1908, 
it was influential in having enacted another 
law on the same subject. The Meat Inspec- 
tion Act of 1900, which imposed severe re- 
strictions on the importation of fresh and 
cured meats of certain kinds and prohibited 
the importation of others, was also the work 
of the Bund der Landwirte. In 1904, it 
induced the imperial government to place 
special limitations on the importation of 
live stock and meats. In 1902, a revision of 
the tariff law was secured, by which an 
increase was made in the duty on cereals. 



The Agrarians of Germany 219 

In 1906, a further increase was obtained. 
At its instigation the Prussian Landtag ap- 
propriated 5,000,000 marks toward assisting 
in the establishment of public grain elevators 
in Prussia, and on April 28, 1900, twenty- 
four such elevators were in operation. The 
organization was also interested in measures 
of more general usefulness. In the Prussian 
Landtag it advocated the improvement of 
the rivers, and the construction of canals. 
It originated a new school measure which 
unfortunately did not become a law, by 
which the cost of maintaining the district 
schools was to be so apportioned that the 
poorer districts were to be relieved of part 
of the expense, which was to be borne by the 
State. The annual meetings of the Bund der 
Landwirte constitute an important event even 
in Berlin, and owing to their size are required 
to be held in the largest meeting place that 
can be procured. The attendance sometimes 
reaches ten thousand, the members coming 
from every district of Germany, all enthu- 
siastic for the cause. This large body of 
agriculturists meeting together for the benefit 
of their calling is in itself an inspiration in 
the propaganda of improved farming. 



220 The New Agrarianism 

The growth of the Bund der Landwirte 
has been the wonder of students of political 
economy. As early as the annual meeting 
of 1894, the membership had reached 178,939, 
and it has grown continuously, until, in 191 o, 
it was 316,000, and is still increasing. In- 
cluded in the membership are many tens of 
thousands of small agriculturists who also 
carry on a handicraft or trade, and artisans 
and tradespeople who follow agriculture as a 
secondary calling. The value of woman's 
assistance in the movement was early recog- 
nized, and provision made for the participa- 
tion of the wives and daughters of the 
members, at the meetings. The cooperative 
branch of the organization has likewise in- 
creased steadily. At the annual meeting held 
in 1898, there were in operation twenty-two 
cooperative savings and loan banks, fifteen 
cooperative stores, and thirty-nine organiza- 
tions for the disposal of farm products. In 
January, 191 3, a total of 380 cooperative 
associations was in operation. The Central 
Cooperative Credit Association was particu- 
larly successful, the turnover for 1902 being 
112,000,000 marks, which in 1907, had risen 
to 178,000,000 marks. In 1912 it was 322,- 



The Agrarians of Germany 221 

000,000 marks. The success of the Bund der 
Landwirte is entirely the result of capable 
business management and well-directed agi- 
tation. Its business methods have been 
superb. Whenever it ventured into a branch 
of agricultural, mercantile, or banking life, it 
secured the best experts procurable to devise 
the necessary plans and attend to their ex- 
ecution. When, on December 21, 1892, Herr 
Ruprecht directed the attention of the farm- 
ers of Germany to the fact that they must 
organize, he declared with all the emphasis he 
was capable of: 

We must agitate! . . . We must so agitate 
that the entire nation may hear! We must 
so agitate that our words will penetrate into the 
halls of Parliament and of the Ministry ! We 
must so agitate that our words may become 
audible even on the steps of the throne! 1 

The campaign of agitation has been carried 
on largely through public meetings. In 19 12, 
13,252 meetings were held in widely separated 
places all over Germany. The organization 
has in its employ a corps of speakers who 
have been trained in the agrarian lore in a 

1 Zum 18. Februar, IQ03, Zehn Jahre wirtschaftspoli- 
tischen Kampfes, Berlin, 1903, pp. 14-15. 



222 The New Agrarianism 

speakers' school maintained by it, at the head 
of which is one of its most capable members. 
It has also established a public press which 
is well edited and exerts a wide influence. 
Its principal organ is the Deutsche Tages- 
zeitung, published in Berlin, which soon after 
its appearance in September, 1894, attained 
a daily circulation of 42,000 copies, and has 
since become one of the leading newspapers 
of Germany. Many other large daily news- 
papers advocate its doctrines. It publishes 
a monthly journal which is said to have a 
circulation of 246,000 copies. A number of 
its weekly papers publish editions ranging 
from 12,000 to 24,000 copies. 

In its upward course, the Bund der Land- 
wirte jostled roughly against many men and 
many interests, and powerful enemies have 
sprung up on all sides. Confining the mem- 
bership to adherents of the Christian religion, 
to the exclusion of that element of the popu- 
lation which by its power of initiative and 
energy in execution has contributed so largely 
to Germany's present industrial and com- 
mercial eminence, has created a feeling of 
bitter resentment in the minds of the persons 
mainly affected. Subsidized by those in 



The Agrarians of Germany 223 

opposition, an antagonistic literature has 
come into existence. In these writings the 
organization is pictured as composed of aris- 
tocrats, because a number of noblemen who 
are large land owners are enrolled in its mem- 
bership, and who, by force of character as 
much as by reason of social position, have 
been enabled to take a leading part in the 
management. The truth is that, in 1907, 
only one half of one per cent, of the members 
were large proprietors, and 14.5 per cent, 
were the owners and tenants of medium-sized 
estates, while 85 per cent, were the owners 
of small farms. The leaders are also said 
to be demagogues who are deceiving the 
people with misleading statements. 

The Bund der Landwirte has no literary 
support save that which is supplied by its 
own force of writers, who, however, are quite 
capable of upholding their side, Foreigners 
have, perhaps unconsciously, imbibed the 
views which those opposed to the Bund der 
Landwirte in Germany have so extensively 
disseminated. The exasperating tone often 
employed by the Agrarian press when advo- 
cating measures in the interest of German 
agriculture may have helped to create this 



224 The New Agrarianism 

prejudice. William Harbutt Dawson, the 
English writer, * can see no good in the move- 
ment; and Wolf von Schierbrand, writing 
from an American standpoint, observes noth- 
ing but the injury which the Agrarians have 
done to American commerce by the tariff and 
meat inspection laws which they were instru- 
mental in having enacted. 2 

Philosophic writers in all countries realize 
the value of political action by the farmers 
themselves in bringing about better condi- 
tions in agriculture. All are impressed with 
what has been done by this means in Ger- 
many. J. Ellis Barker, 3 an English writer, 
in comparing the recent progress in German 
agriculture with the decline of English farm- 
ing, frankly tells the British farmers that, in 
order to bring English farming back to the 
same relative position with Germany that it 
formerly held, they must work together in 
an effort to influence legislation. He says : 

1 "The German Agrarian Movement," William Har- 
butt Dawson, The Contemporary Review, London, January, 
1905, pp. 65-76. 

2 Germany, Wolf von Schierbrand, New York, 1902, 
p. 299. 

3 Modern Germany, J. Ellis Barker, London, 1909, 
pp. 404-405. 



The Agrarians of Germany 225 

Before all, the powerful agricultural interest 
must strive to gain power by combination. It 
must form a solid phalanx, and must assert its 
claims with energy in Parliament and before the 
local authorities, which only too often tax and 
worry agriculturists out of existence. If the 
agricultural interest remains politically formless, 
shapeless, voiceless, inert, it will continue neg- 
lected. If it is united in mind and united in 
purpose, the great political leader will be forth- 
coming who will make the cause of agriculture 
his own, and who is prepared to create condi- 
tions which will make our rural industries 
powerful and prosperous. 

To the American farmer the achievements 
of the Bund der Landwirte should be a shin- 
ing example of what may be done by an 
organization of farmers to improve the status 
of agriculture. Its history and methods of 
organization, and its work, merit the most 
careful investigation. Once the American 
farmers are imbued with the spirit of the Ger- 
man Agrarians, the questions of "Why not 
organize?" — "Why not begin a campaign of 
agitation for an adjustment between agricul- 
ture and industry?" will appear superfluous. 



INDEX 



Accounts, keeping of, in cities devoid of system, 20 
Act to Regulate Commerce, An, or, the Interstate Com- 
merce Law, 43 
Adminstration, inefficient, in cities, 20 
Adolphus, Gustavus, the "Snow King," 159 
Agrarians of Germany, 161 

"Agrarians," members of Bund der Landwirte called, 213 
Agrarpolitik, by Dr. Joseph Grunzel; note, 180 
"Agricultural, Abstract — Farms and Farm Property by 

States," note, 114 
Agricultural Rates Law, the, passed, 141 
Agriculture, number of persons employed in, 115 

Secretary of, quoted, 117 

teaching of, in schools and colleges, 122 

money given for college courses in, 124 

Department of, created, 124 

attempts in England to improve, 140 

in England, 142 

in Germany, 142 

Germany's tariff on articles of, 144 

its rapid rise in Germany, 146 

present condition of, in Germany, 146 

England's lead in, 146 

in Germany and England, 152 

striving for advancement in U. S. of, 154 

at low state of development in U. S., 155 

U. S. Department of, 163 

Departments of, in individual States, 166 

laws relating to, 167 

promoting of, in Canada, 170 

only industry not organized, 209 
"Agriculture in the U. S." by Charles L. Flint; note, 121 
Albert Agricultural College at Clasnevin, reorganization 
of, 205 

227 



228 Index 



Alberta, agitation for government loans to farmers in, 189 

Alsace-Lorraine, 218 

Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, 32 

strike of, 52 
American Federation of Labor, 32 
American Magazine, The, articles in, note, 39 
American Political Science Review, The, article in, note, 74 
American Review of Reviews, The, article in, note, 90 
American Tariff Controversies, etc., by Edward Stanwood, 

note, 128 
American Tobacco Co., dissolved, 89 
American Window Glass Co., the, stops paying dividends 
on common stock, 84 

no dividends paid on preferred stock, 84 
Annual Review of Foreign Commerce, etc., note, no 
Apples, organizations to handle production of, 134 
Arkwright, Richard, inventor of the spinning-frame, 61 
Arrears Bill, passed in Parliament, 199 
Arthur, Chester A., as President, n 

made vice-President, 12 
Aspects of the Irish Question, by Sidney Brooks, note, 203 
Assembly, special acts of, 27 

Atlantic Monthly, The, article published in, note, 206 
Australia, suffrage in, 3 

laws in, 91 

government loans on farm lands in, 189 
Austria -Hungary, 159; mining accidents in, 94 

beet-sugar in, 127 

laborers from, go to Germany, 149 

our mills worked by immigrants from, 165 

treaty with Germany, 211 
Automobile Trade Journal, note, 5 
Automobiles, perfecting of, 4 

B 

Barker, J. Ellis, Modern Germany, by, note, 187 

Modern Germany, by, note, 224 

quoted, 225 
Barley, increase in production of, in 
Belgium, mining accidents in, 94 

cost of living in, 97 

industry changes in, 104 

beet-sugar in, 127 



Index 229 



Belgium, cooperative credit associations in, 186 

Germany makes treaty with, 211 
Berlin, Bund der Landwirte meets in, 215 
Bessemer, steel invention by, 159 
Bismarck, Prince, address to farmers by, 210 
Black Patch tobacco, 133 
Boers, new nation of, 2 

Bonaparte, Napoleon, called by the French, 72 
Boy's Demonstration Work : The Corn Clubs, note, 170 
British Columbia, 172; agitation for government loans to 

farmers in, 189 
British Columbia Magazine, article in, note, 189 
Brochner, Jessie, book written by, note, 153 
Brooks, Sidney, article by, note, 204 
Brown, William Garrott, article by, 62 
Bruncken, Ernest, article by, note, 74 
Building and Loan Associations, 177 
Bulletin "Manufactures", note, 76 
Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, note, 97; note, 98; note, 

99; note, 100; note, 101 
Bund der Landwirte, organized, 212 

the first president of, 212 

merged with the Deutsche Bauernbund, 213 

story of birth of, 215 

primary bodies of the, 214 

meets in Berlin, 215 

plunges into political campaign, 216 

success of the, 217 

laws prohibiting speculation in cereals procured by, 
218 

revision of tariff on cereals secured by, 219 

grain elevators secured through the, 219 

work done by the, 219 

growth of the, 220 

women, participation of, in, 220 
Bureau of Mines, for prevention of accidents, 95 
Buring, devises scheme of Landschaften, 179 
Burke, Mr., murder of, 200 
Burley Society, formed by growers of Burley tobacco, 

133 

Burton, Senator Joseph R., conviction of, 15 

serves term in Missouri jail, 15 
Business, changes in, 27 
Byles, L. M., " In the United States," by, note, 96 



230 Index 



California, initiative and referendum in, 66 

race-track law in, 68 

petroleum discovered in, 85 

Country Life Commission in, 103 

fruit in, 135 

Fresh Fruit Exchange, 135 

Fruit Distributors, 135 

Fruit Growers Exchange, 136 
Capri vi, Chancellor Count von, downfall of, 212 
Carnegie, Andrew, 54; takes early advantage of new pro- 
cesses of steel making, 159 
Carnegie Steel Company, strike in, 52 
Cavendish, Lord Frederick, murder of, 200 
Census Bureau, number of persons employed in Agri- 
culture, 115 
Central Cooperative Credit Association, 220 
Central Cooperative Credit Bank, in Prussia, 186 
Central-Landschaft, Landschaften combined into a, 180 
Central Pacific Railroad, financing of, 8 
"Changing Position of American Trade, The," by Thomas 

A. Thacher, note, 109 
Chicago, United States District Court at, 47 

strike in, 52 
China, becomes republic, 3 
Chorley , mill at, destroyed, 6 1 
Civic wrongs, campaign against, .6 

Civil Service Commission, report of, quoted, 13; note, 21 
Civil War, 6, 57; industry after the, 25 
Clasnevin, Albert Agricultural College at, reorganization 

of, 205 
Clearing House, 51 

Cleland, Ethel, article written by, note, 74 
Coercion Bill, enactment of the, 199 
Cceur d'Alene, miner's strike in, 53 
Colorado, strike in, 53 

a politician makes election promise in, 63 

initiative and referendum in, 66 

apple production in, 134 
"Coming of Bonaparte, The," by Earl of Rosebery, note, 71 
Commerce, Department of, 91 
Commission Government, in Des Moines, Iowa, 22 

started in Galveston, 22 



Index 231 



Commissioner of Corporations, report of, 79 
Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Annual Reports of, for 

1910, for 1911, and for 1912, note, 28 
Committee Appointed to Investigate Railroad Riots, Report 

of, note, 35 
"Commonwealth Ruled by Farmers, A," by Frederick C. 

Howe, note, 153 
Confederation, forming of the, Australian, 91 
Congested Districts Board, 202 
Congress, action adopted in, 49 
appoints a committee, 51 
investigates mining accidents, 94 
Congressional Committee, appointed by Congress, 51 
"Conservation Ideals in the Improvement of Plants," by 

Dr. J. H. Webber, note, 164 
" Conservatism and Reform," by Mo wry Saben, note, 42 
Consolidated Ice Co., no dividends paid on common stock, 

84 
Constitution of England, 23 
Contemporary Review, The, article in, note, 66 

article published in, note, 224 
"Cooperative Marketing of California Fresh Fruit," by 

Fred Wilbur Powell, note, 135 
"Cooperation in Handling and Marketing of Fruit," by 

G. Harold Powell, note, 136 
Cooperative Credit Associations, established all over 

Europe, 186 
Cork, Munster Institute at, 205 
Corn Laws, 140 

Cornell University, Dr. J. H. Webber of, 164 
Corporations, income of, 28 

organized to compete with trusts, 78 
discontent of people against, 59 
Corruption in cities, causes of, 17 
"Cost of Living, The," note, 96 

by Henry Pratt Fairchild, note, 102 
"Cost of Living in Great Britain, Germany, France, 

Belgium, and United States," note, 97 
Country Life, commission on, appointed, 103 
Country Life Commission, Report of the, note, 103 
Credit Fonder de France, a private banking institution in 

France, 188 
"Credit Foncier de France, The," by Peter G. Zaldari, 

note, 189 



232 Index 



Credit Mobilier, a corporation, 8 

Crook County, 67 

Crop Reporter, note, 106 

Crucible Steel Co., no dividends paid on preferred stock, 

8 4 
Curtis, William Eleroy, One Irish Summer, by, note, 202 



Daily Consular and Trade Reports, note, 91; note, 151 
"Danish Life in Town and Country," by Jessie Brochner, 

note, 153 
Davis, Thomas Osborne, requiem by, 200 
Dawson, William Harbutt, against the Bund der Land- 

wirte, 223, 224 

article by, note, 224 
Debentures, or Pfandbriefen, 180 
Defective Methods of Legislation, by Ernest Bruncken, 

note, 74 
Demonstration Work on Southern Farms, by S. A. Knapp, 

note, 170 
Denmark, suffrage in, 3 

farmers educated in, 153 
model small-farm country of Europe, 153 
Denver Post, The, advertisement in, note, 63 
Denver Republican, The, advertisement in, note, 63 
Department of Agriculture, statements of, 106 
created, 124 
limitless fields for, 164 
Department of Agriculture, etc., Sir Horace Plunkett at 

head of, 203 
Derbyshire, riots in, 61 

Des Moines, Iowa, commission government in, 22 
Detroit, bribery in, 19 
Deutsche Bauernbund (German Peasants' Alliance), 212 

merged with the Bund der Landwirte 
Deutsche Tageszeitung, organ of the Bund der Landwirte, 222 
Dominion of Canada, movement of crops in, 172 
Donald, Robert, " The Square Deal in England," by, note, 

97 
Dietrich, Senator, of Kansas, 15 
District of Columbia, increase in cost of foods in, 99 
Driggs, Edward H., Representative to Congress from New 

York, 15 



Index 233 



E 

Edison, Thomas A., interview with, quoted, 149, 150 
Eighty Years' Progress of the U. S., Hartford, Conn., note, 

121 
Eltzbacher, O., book written by, note, 145 

tables printed by, 150 

table of improvement in beet-sugar by, 152 

quoted, 147 
Employees, in manufacturing establishments, 76 
Engines, perfection of gasoline, 4 
England, factory system in, 88 

complaints against combinations of wealth in, 96 

cost of living in, 97 

invention of spinning machinery in, 118 ff. 

imported foodstuffs for, 139 

realizes shortage of foodstuffs, 139 

acres cultivated in, 155 

leads in agriculture, 146 

land for crops in, 148 

Germany's agriculture compared with, 152 

workmen brought from, 162 

credit banks established in, 186 
English Board of Trade, report by, 97 
English Parliament, the, assists laboring classes to buy 

land, 141 
Entwicklung der wirtschaftspolitischen Ideen im iq. Jahr- 
hundert, by Eugen von Philippovich, note, 144; note, 161 ; 
note, 217 
Equitable Life Assurance Society, quarrel among managers 

of, 47 
Ethical development, 5 
Europe, ideas borrowed from, 138 

cooperative credit societies in, 178 
*' Europe, In," by, Frederick Austin Ogg, note, 96 
Evangelist, The, Henry M. Field, editor of, 193 
Evolution of Industry, The, by D. H. Macgregor, note, 2; 

note, 58 
Evolution of Modern Capitalism, The, by John A. Hobson, 

quoted, 78 
" Expansion of Equality, The," note, 3 

F 

Factories, become universal, 119 



234 Index 



Faculty of Agriculture, at Royal College in Dublin, 

establishment of, 204 
Fairchild, Henry Pratt, " The Cost of Living," by, note, 

102 
Far Western States, new coal mines in, 85 
Farmers, credit system of the, 175 ft". 
Farmers' Alliance, the, 126; to right farmers' wrongs, 41 
Farmers' Chambers, agricultural affairs in hands of, 217 
Fay, C. R., article by, note, 142 
Federal Regulation of Railway Rates, Albert N. Merritt, 

note, 35 
Fertilizers, table showing increase in use of, 151 
Field, Henry M., writes of Ireland, quoted, 193 
Fields, Factories and Workshops, by P. Kropotkin, note, 123 
Finland, suffrage in, 3 

cooperative credit associations in, 186 
First Annual Report of Bureau of Mines, note, 95 
Fisher, Irving, article by, note, 103 
Flannagan, Delegate, of Texas, 1 1 
Flint, Charles L., article by, note, 121 
Florida, organization in, 136 
Food, alarming rise in cost of, 137 
" Food Prices and Cost of Living," by J. D. Magee, note, 

103 
Foodstuffs, increase in production of, 1 1 1 
Foreign Commerce and Navigation of the U. S., note, 106 
Fortnightly Review, The, article published in, quoted, 71 

article published in, note, 204 
Forum, The, article published in, note, 42 
Foxcroft, Frank, note, 66 
France, church disestablished in, 3 

legislation in, 71 

population in, 72 

mining accidents in, 94 

cost of living in, 97 

industry changes in, 104 

beet-sugar in, 127 

war with Germany, 142 

workmen brought from, 162 

cooperative credit associations in, 186 

the Credit Fonder de France in, 188 
Frederick the Great of Prussia, 178 

From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn, by Henry 
M. Field, note, 193 



Index 235 



Galveston, rebuilding of, 22 

Garfield, James A., made President, 12 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 6 

General Convention, 4 

General Inclosure Act, passed, 140 

George, David Lloyd, quoted, 97 ^^^ 

Georgia, peach-shippers of, 136 f* 

"German Agrarian Movement, The," by William Harbutt / 

Dawson, note, 224 
German Peasants' Alliance, 212 
German Stock Exchange, forbidden to speculate in cereals 

in, 218 
Germany, business laws in, 93 

cost of living in, 97 

beet-sugar in, 127 

imported foodstuffs for, 139 

war with France, 142 

agriculture, literature, and philosophy in, 142 

industry in, 143 

present condition of agriculture in, 146 

improvements in farming in, 146 

agricultural schools in, 147 

improvement in agriculture in, 152 

acres cultivated in, 155 

workmen brought from, 162 

the Landschaften in, 178 

political organization among farmers in, 210 
"Germany of To-day, The," by Hugo Munsterberg, 158 
Germany, workmen brought from, 162 
Germany, by Wolf von Schierbrand, note, 224 
Geschichte der deutschen Landwirtschaft, by Dr. Theodore 

Freiherr von der Goltz, note, 179 
Gifnn, Sir Robert, quoted, 58 

GirVs Demonstration Work: The Canning Clubs, note, 170 
Glances at Europe, by Horace Greeley, note, 192 
Goltz, Dr. Theodore Freiherr von der, book by, note, 179 
Grain Commission, 172 
Granger party, organized by farmers, 41 

ridiculed by the East, 41, 42 

end of, 41 
Grant, as President, 10 
Gray, George W., quoted, 64 



236 Index 



"Great Unrest," the, I 

Great Revolution, legislation in France during, 71 

Greeley, Horace, What I Know of Farming, by, 123 

quoted, 192 

speaks of necessary reforms in Ireland, 201 
Green, Darius, and his flying machine, 4 
Greenback Labor party, 24 
Grosscup, Peter S., quoted, note, 55 

Grunzel, Regierungsrat, Professor Dr. Joseph, book by, 
note, 180 

H 

Harriman, E. H., 166 

Harrison, President, defeated for reelection, 52 

Havana Lottery, The, 14 

Heinze, F. Augustus, 48 

Hendrick, Burton J., author of " The Recall in Seattle," 
note, 65 

Hayes, President, cabinet of, 1 1 

Hess, Dr. Ralph H., article by, note, 103 

Hesse, 218 

"High Cost of Living Going Higher? Is the," by Irving 
Fisher, note, 103 

Highways of Progress, by James J. Hill, note, 102; note, 
169 

Hill, JamesJ., tells of unequal progress between agricul- 
ture and industry, 102 

U. S. Government statistics favor idea expressed by, 

104 
suggestions in interest of agriculture, 169 

Hobson, John A., quoted, 78 

Holland, cooperative credit associations in, 186 

Homestead, Penn., strike in, 52 

Howe, Frederick C, article by, note, 153 

Hungary, industry changes in, 104 



Idaho, Cceur d'Alene in, 53 

law for beet-sugar in, 130 
Illinois, Northern District of, 47 

town-sites in, 87 
Imperial University, founding in Japan of, 161 
India, cooperative credit associations in, 186 



Index 237 



Indiana, town-sites in, 

Industrial Farms Act, 171 

"Industrial Revolution in Japan, The," by Count Okuma, 

note, 160 
Industry, Development of, 26 
Initiative and Referendum in the United States, by Frank 

Foxcroft, note, 66 
Internal Revenue Bureau, 92 
International Union of Bridge Workers, etc., dynamite 

campaign by, 134 
Interstate Commerce Commission, 36, 91 
Interstate Commerce Law, enactment of, 42, 43 

enforcing of, 44 

Standard Oil Co. indicted under, 47 
Inventions, mankind benefited by, 4 
Ireland, uprisings in, 192 

Ireland poverty and distress in, 192 ff. 

National Land League organized, 197 ff. 

Arrears Bill passed, 199 

Coercion Bill passed, 199 

Land Leaguers imprisoned in, 199 

land legislation for benefit of, 200 

Congested Districts Board in, 202 

purchase of property allowed to people of, 201 

agricultural schools in, 205 

new national life in, 206 
Irish Agricultural Organization Society, the, formed by 

Sir Horace Plunkett, 203 
Irish Department of Agriculture, etc., 162 
Irish Land League, referred to, 214 
Irish National Land League, organized by Parnell, 197 
Isthmus of Panama, Canal on, 2 
Italy, beet-sugar in, 127 

our mills worked by immigrants from, 165 

cooperative credit associations in, 186 

Germany makes treaty with, 211 



Japan, advancement in, 160 

cooperative credit association in, 186 
Jesuits, on committee for Department of Agriculture, 204 
Jones, H. F., Mayor of Redmond, 67 
Journal of Political Economy, The, article in, note, 103 



238 Index 



Kansas, Senator Burton of, 15 

Senator Dietrich of, 15 

law for sugar-beets in, 130 

apple production in, 134 
Kenmare, Earl of, great estate of, 194 
Kentucky, " Night-riders" in, 133 

tobacco-growers of, 132 
Kilmainham prison, Land Leaguers thrown into, 199 
Kipling, referred to, 38 
Knapp, Dr. Seaman A., agent for agriculture in Southern 

States, 170 
Knickerbocker Trust Co., closing of, 48 
Kropotkin, Prince Peter, schemes for improving agricul- 
ture, 123 



Lancashire, riots in, 61 

"Land of Fulfillment, The," by Samuel P. Orth, note, 142 

Landschaften, or Provincial Land Banks in Germany, 178 

Landschaft, landowners forced to join, 179 

Landtag, Prussian, procures grain elevators, 219 

law for farmers passed by the, 217 
Landwirtschaftskammern, Farmers' Chambers, 217 
Lauck, W. Jett, article by, note, 103 
"Legislative Reference Work and Its Opportunities," by 

Clinton Rogers Woodruff, note, 74 
"Legislative Reference," by Ethel Cleland, note, 74 
Legislature, race-track law, repealed by, 68 
Leicestershire, riots in, 61 
Lever, Charles, referred to, 207 
Liebig, Justus von, book written by, 146 
Lincoln, Abraham, 7 
Los Angeles, dispatch from, published, quoted, 68 

free lunches in, 68 

recall used in, 65 
Louisiana Lottery, the, 14 
Louisiana, petroleum discovered in, 85 

sugar-cane in, 128 
Lover, Samuel, referred to, 207 
Lowell, James Russell, quoted, 49, 50 
Luddite Riots, 61 



Index 239 



M 

McClay, Marshal, of Redmond, 67 

McClure's Magazine, article published in, note, 65 

Macgregor, D. H., the English economist, 2, 58 

Machinery, installment of, 53 

Magee, J. D., "Food Prices and Cost of Living," by, note, 

103 
Maine, initiative and referendum in, 66 
"Maintaining Soil Fertility in Germany, by A. M. 

Thackara, note, 151 
Manitoba, 172 

agitation for government loans to farmers in, 189 
"Manufactures" Bulletin, note, 118 
Massachusetts, data from, 57 

Country Life Commission in, 103 
Meat Inspection Act, the, work of the Bund der Landwirte, 

218 
Merritt, Albert N., note, 35 
Michigan, iron-ore fields in, 85 

law for sugar-beet, 130 
Middle Western States, new coal mines in, 85 
Minnesota, iron-ore fields in, 85 

Country Life Commission in, 103 

sugar-beet in, 130 
Minesota Sugar Co. vs. Iverson, note, 130 
Missouri, Senator Burton serves term in jail in, 15 

initiative and referendum in, 66 
Mitchell, Senator John H., of Oregon, 15 

dies before decision, 16 
"Mob, The," by Edwin Davies Schoonmaker, note, 39 
Modern Germany, by J. Ellis Barker, note, 187; note, 

224 
Modern Germany, by O. Eltzbacher, 145 
Monahan, A. C, article on education, by, note, 168 
Monongahela River Consolidated Coal & Coke Co., no 

dividends on preferred stock, 84 
Montana, initiative and referendum in, 66 
Montana Daily Record, the, note, 67 
Montesquieu, Baron, theory of, adopted, 23 
Moody's Magazine, article in, note, 189 
Moore, Thomas, referred to, 207 
Morning Oregonian, Portland, quoted, note, 68 
Morse, Charles W., 48 



240 Index 



Municipal Government, improvement in, 21 

Munster Institute at Cork, agricultural training for girls 

at the, 205 
Miinsterberg, Hugo, quoted, 157, 158 

N 

National Fireproofing Co., stops paying dividends on 

common stock, 84 

no dividends on preferred stock, 84 
National Government, assistance demanded from, 42 
Nationalists, on committee for Department of Agriculture, 

204 
Nevada, initiative and referendum in, 66 
New England, mills and factories in, 164 
New Jersey, corporation laws in, 45 
New York Custom House, 1 1 

New York, dangers of initiative and referendum in, 70 
New York Post Office, 11 
New Zealand, suffrage in, 3 

loans on farm lands in, 189 
Nicholson, Prof. J. S., article by, note, 103 
North American Review, The, article from, quoted, note, 

55 

article published in, 62 

article in, note, 103 

article in, note, 109 

article in, quoted, 153 

article in, note, 160 
Norway, suffrage in, 3 
Nova Scotia, government loans to farmers in, 189 



Oats, increase in production of, 1 1 1 ff. 
O'Brien, R. Barry, writes life of Parnell, note, 96 
Ogg, Frederick Austin, " In Europe," by, note, 96 
Ohio, initiative and referendum in, 66 
Oklahoma, initiative and referendum in, 66 

petroleum discovered in, 85 
Okuma, Count, quoted, 160 

One Irish Summer, by William Eleroy Curtis, note, 202 
Ontario, Canada, model farms in, 170 



Index 241 



Opportunity, by George W. Gray, quoted, 64 
Orangemen, on committee of Department of Agriculture, 

204 
Oregon, initiative and referendum in, 66 

law for size of bed sheets in, 68 

dispatch from Los Angeles published in, 68 

direct legislation in, 69 

Country Life Commission in, 103 

apple production in, 134 
Organic Chemistry Applied to Agriculture, etc., by Justus 

von Liebig, 146 
Organizations, still maintained in industry, 208 
Orth, Samuel P., article by, note, 142 
Outlook, The, article from, note, 64 

article in, note, 89 

article in, 97 

article in, note, 153 



Panama, Isthmus of, canal on, 2 

Parliament, the English, assists laboring classes to buy 

land, 141 
Parliamentary Union, for support of Bund der Landwirte, 

216 
Parnell, Charles Stewart, works for Ireland in Parliament, 

195 

Life of, by R. Barry O'Brien, note, 196 

work in Parliament of, 196 

called "The Uncrowned King of Ireland," 198 

arrest and acquittal of, 199 

writer forges name of, 200 

brings about land legislation, 201 
Parker, Edward W., writes The Production of Coal in iqii, 

note, 85 
Payne- Aldrich Tariff Bill, disappointment at, 50 
Pennsylvania, manufacturing in, 38 

against excessive tariff, 49 

dangers of initiative and referendum in, 70 

new coal mines in, 85 

petroleum in, 87 
Pennsylvania R. R. Co., operates demonstration trains for 

farmers, 138 
People's Bank, by Henry W. Wolff, note, 181 



242 Index 



People's party, or Populist, 41 

Persia, receives parliamentary government, 3 

Pfandbriefen, or Debentures, 180 

Philippoyich, Eugen von, book by, note, 144; note, 217 

views of, 161 
Phillips, Wendell, 6 

Phoenix Park, Dublin, murder of Lord Frederick Caven- 
dish at, 200 
Pittsburgh Coal Co., no dividends on preferred stock, 84 
Pittsburgh Stove and Range Co., the, stops paying 

dividends, 83 
Pittsburgh, bribery in, 19 

consolidations in, 82 ff. 
Planters' Protective Association has an educative influence 

over members, 133 
Ploetz, Captain von, first president of the Bund der 
Landwirte, 212 

president of Parliamentary Union, 216 
Plunkett, Sir Horace, forms the Irish Agricultural Organi- 
zation Society, 202 

establishes Department of Agriculture, etc., 203 

" His Works," by Sidney Brooks, note, 204 

reasoning of, quoted, 205 

" The Regeneration of Ireland," by, note, 206 
Plunkett, Sir Horace, 162, 210 
Poe, Edgar A., referred to, 40 
"Political Consistency and Cost of Living," by W. Jett 

Lauck, note, 103 
Pope, Alexander, quoted, 75 
Popular Science Monthly, article in, note, 103 

article in, note, 164 
Population, for 191 1, 114 

in cities and country, 16 

increase in, 112 
"Population of Cities," the Bulletin, note, 104 
Populist, or People's party, 41, 64 
Populistic Western States, feeling against tariff in, 49 
Portugal, suffrage in, 3 
Portugal, becomes a republic, 3 
Post Office Department, 15 
Powell, Fred Wilbur, article by, note, 135 
Powell, G. Harold, article by, note, 136 
Preliminary Statements on Coal-mine Accidents, etc., note, 
95 



Index 243 



" Price Fallacy of High Costs, The," by Dr. Ralph H. 

Hess, note, 103 
Production of Coal in 1911, The, by Edward W. Parker, 

note, 85 
Promoters, dishonest, 87 
"Proposal for Improvement of Our Condition," article by 

Herr Ruprecht, 212 
Protestant Episcopal Church, General Convention of, 4 
Provincial Land Banks, in Germany, 178 
Provincial Legislature, 171 
Prussia, mining accidents in, 94 

laws for small landowners in, 145 

agricultural schools in, 147 

cooperative credit associations originated in, 1 78 

serfdom abolished in, 179 

Landschaften introduced into all Prussia, 179 

success of Bund der Landwirte in, 217 
Prussian Landtag, money for grain elevators, 219 
Public Libraries, article in, note, 74 
Public Utilities, control of, 19 
Publications of American Statistical Association, quotation 

from, note, 56 
Pullman Palace Car Co., strike in, 52 



Quarterly Journal of Economics, article in, note, 142 

note, 153 
Quarterly Review, The, article in, note, 103 

summary of German credit societies in, 181 



Raiffeisen, Friedrich Wilhelm, an economic reformer, 
181, 182 

founds a loan society, 182 ff. 
Railroads, building of, 26 

charges made against, 34 

grievances of farmers against, 40 
Railway Commission, 172 

" Recall in Seattle, The," by Burton J. Hendrick, note, 65 
Recall, the, times used, 65 

possibilities of, 65, 66 



244 Index 



Reclamation Act, passed by Congress, 190 
Redmond, Crook County, threatened invasion of, 67 

mayor and marshal of, resign, 67 
"Regeneration of Ireland, The," by Sir Horace Plunkett, 

note, 206 
Reichstag, dissolved, 216 
Report of the Secretary of Agriculture, note, 125 

note, 131 
Republican Congress, enacts civil service law, 12 
Republican National Convention of 1880, II 
Republican National Convention of 1908 promises revision 

of tariff, 49 
Republican party, resentment against, 75 
" Retail Prices 1890 to 191 1," note, 100 

" 1890 to 1912," note, 101 
Richardson, E. Verne, article by, note, 91 
Riots, Luddite, 65 
"Rise in Prices, etc., The," by Prof. J. S. Nicholson, note, 

103 
Roosevelt, Theodore, appoints commission, 102 
Rosebery, Earl of, article by, quoted, 71 
Roumania, 211 
Royal College in Dublin, Faculty of Agriculture established 

in, 204 
Ruprecht, Herr, an article by, 211, 212 

takes lead in organization of Bund der Landwirte, 212 

quoted, 221 
Rural Free Delivery Post, 5 
Russia, industry changes in, 104 

beet-sugar in, 127 

laborers came to Germany from, 149 

our mills worked by immigrants from, 165 

cooperative credit associations in, 186 



Saben, Mowry, author of "Conservatism and Reform," 

note, 42 
St. Louis, bribery in, 19 

Salem, Oregon, newspaper item from, quoted, 67 
San Francisco, bribery in, 19 
Saskatchewan, agitation for government loans to farmers 

in, 189 
Saxony, 218 



Index 245 



Schierbrand, Wolf von, against Agrarians, 224 

School of Agriculture, founded in Japan, 161 

School of Mechanical Engineering, founded in Japan, 

161 
Schoonmaker, Edwin Davies, note, 39 
Schulze-Delitzsch, Franz Hermann, an economic reformer, 
182 

founds loan society, 182 ff. 
Schurz, Carl, Secretary of the Interior, 11 
Scotland, agricultural experts to Ireland from, 163 
Seattle, recall in, 65 

Secretary of Interior, Carl Schurz becomes, 1 1 
Servia, cooperative credit associations in, 186 

Germany's treaty with, 211 
Sherman Law, enactment of the, 43 

non -enforcement of the, 44 

rigid enforcement of, 208 
Sherman Law, 92 
Siemens, steel invention by, 159 
Silesia, Herr Ruprecht a farmer of, 211 

a Landschaft established in, 179 
"Slaves of the North, The," by Edwin Davies Schoon- 
maker, note, 39 
Small Holdings and Allotments Act, 152 
"Small Holdings, etc., in England," by C. R. Fay, 

note, 142 
Smith, Gerrit, 6 
Smith, Herbert Knox, Commissioner of Corporations, 

79 

"Social Denmark," note, 153 

South, the, corruption in, after war, 7 

South Africa, Boer countries of, 2 

South Dakota, initiative and referendum in, 66 

Spain, cooperative credit associations in, 186 

freedom of public worship in, 4 
Spirit of the Laws, by Baron Montesquieu, 23 
"Square Deal in England, The," by Robert Donald, 

note, 97 
Standard Oil Co., dissolved, 89 

indictment of, 47 
Stanwood, Edward, book by, note, 128 
Statesman's Yearbook, The, note, 72 
Statistical Abstract of the U. 5., note, 114 

note, 118 



246 Index 



"Status of Rural Education in the United States," by A. C, 

Monahan, note, 168 
Stein, Baron von, abolishes serfdom in Prussia, 179 
Stock Exchange, New York, drop of securities in, 48 
Stock Exchange, New York, 51 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 6 
Strong Man, the, Napoleon Bonaparte, 72 
Suffrage, in the United States, 3 
Sugar, attempts to help industry, 127 

Eltzbacher's table of Improvement in, 152 

tariff protection for, 128 
Sugar Co. vs. Auditor General, note, 130 
Sultan, abdication of, in Turkey, 3 
Sweden, beet-sugar in, 127 

suffrage in, 3 
Switzerland, cooperative credit system in, 186 

doctrines borrowed from, 64 

Germany's treaty with, 211 



Taft, President, 12 ; endorsement of Tariff Law by, 50 

farmer's credit system discussed by, 175 
Tariff Act of 1909, 28 
Tariff Commission, probability of a, 92 
Tariff History of the U. S., The, by F. W. Taussig, note, 

128 
Taussig, F. W., book by, note, 128 
Tennessee, "night-riders" in, 133 

tobacco-growers of, 132 
Tenth Annual Report of the Reclamation Service, note, 191 
Texas, annexation of, 49 

Country Life Commission in, 103 
Thacher, Thomas A., article by, note, 109 
Thackara, A. M., article by, note, 151 
Thirteenth Census of U. S., "Agriculture: Abstract, 
Tenure, Mortgage Indebtedness," note, 174 

note, 76 

note, 104 

note, 118, 131 
Times, the London, forged letter in, 200 
"Tobacco Pools of Kentucky and Tennessee, The," by 

Anna Youngman, note, 134 
Transvaal, Boer farmers in, 2 



Index 247 



Turkey, revolution in, 3 

Tweed, William M., city robbed by, 18 

Twelfth Census of the U. S., "Manufacture," note, 127 
note, 119 

Twenty-sixth Report United States Civil Service Com- 
mission, note, 21 

Twenty-eighth Report United States Civil Service Com- 
mission, note, 13 

U 

"Uncrowned King of Ireland, The," Parnell called by 

Irish, 198 
Union Pacific Railroad, financing of, 8 
Union Pacific Railroad, 167 
Unionists, on committee for Department of Agriculture, 

204 
Unions, organizing of, 30 
United Mine Workers of America, 32 
11 United States, In The," by L. M. Byles, note, 96 
United States, acres cultivated in, 155 

agriculture in low state of development, 155 

complaints against combinations of wealth in, 96 

cost of living in, 97 

discontent among people of, 59 

for regeneration of farming in, 137 

Germany's imports from, 143 

increase in cost of foods in, 99 

its dealing with monopolies, 89 

mechanical industries increase in, 100 

mining accidents in, 94 

religions in, 4 

secures territory, 2 

should educate its farmers, 162 
^ value of farm products in, 118 
United States vs. Burton, note, 15 
United States Circuit Court of Appeals, Standard Oil Co. 

appeals to, 48 
United States Civil Service Commission, Twenty-sixth 

Annual Report of, note, 21 
United States Civil Service Commission, Twenty-eighth 

Annual Report of, note, 13 
United States Constitution, 23 
United States Department of Agriculture, 163 



248 



Index 



United States District Court, at Chicago, 47- 
United States Geological Survey, calculations by, 85 
United States Government, report published by, 98 

statistics of, 104 
United States Steel Corporation, decline in business of, 

79 ff. 

hearings of, note, 79 

investigation of, 51 

trade-unions barred in, 52 
United States Supreme Court, Senator John H. Mitchell 

takes appeal to, 16 
United States vs. Dietrich, note, 15 
United States vs. Driggs, note, 15 
Utah, initiative and referendum in, 66 

polygamy in, 40 



Victoria, loan on farm lands in, 189 

W 

Wales, number of acres cultivated in, 155 

"Wall Street," laws relating to finances and industry for 

benefit of, 50 
Washington, apple production in, 134 
Washington, George, address of, 121 
Watkins, G. P., on the concentration of wealth, 57 

quoted, note, 56 
Webber, Dr. J. H., article on plants by, note, 164 
West, Gov., threatened invasion by, 67 
West Virginia, petroleum in, 87 
"What Edison Saw in German Plants," by Edward Mott 

Wooley, note, 150 
What I Know of Farming, by Horace Greeley, 123 
Wheat, consumption of, 105 ff. 

imported into Germany, 143 

increase in, in ff. 
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 6 
" Wholesale Prices, 1890 to 1910," note, 98 
Wilson, James, head of Department of Agriculture, 125 
Wolff, Henry W. t People's Bank, by, 181 
11 Woman Suffrage," by Gwendolen Overton, note, 3 
Women, entrance into work by, 54 



Index 249 



Women, participation of, in Bund der Landwirte, 220 

Woodruff, Clinton Rogers, article by, note, 74 

Wooley, Edward Mott, article by, note, 150 

Workmen, unions formed by the, 30 

World Almanac and Encyclopedia, The, note, 178 

" World Movement for Woman Suffrage, The," by Ida 

Husted Harper, note, 3 
World To-day, The, note, 96 
World's Work, article in, note, 142 



" Year of Progress in Australia, A," by E. Verne Richardson, 

note, 91 
Yearbook of U. S. Department of Agriculture, note, 116 
Yorkshire, riots in, 61 
Youngman, Anna, article by, note, 134 

Z 

Zaldari, Peter G., article by, note, 189 



OCT 3 19i8 



